The But Deadly 'Verse
by Bella Temple
Summary: AU. Twenty-two years after a fire destroyed his family, Sam's in college and living with his older brother. And he's got no idea just what Dean hasn't been saying. Mute!Dean, told primarily from outside POVs. Now complete.
1. Words Like Violence

**Warnings:** AU, some language, character death**  
Spoilers:** Nothing past the pilot**  
Author's note:** This AU is one of the most ambitious things I've written in the Supernatural fandom. It's one I've been working on for over a year now, one which has stolen my brain and made me both snicker and want to pull my hair out on various occasions. It's one of the most talked about of all of my fics, and it is very, very nearly completed. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Words Like Violence**

The first time Sam brought Jess home, he paused with his key hovering hovering in front of the lock and his jaw working like he had something to say but didn't know how.

Jess had gotten used to this sort of behavior from him on their other dates. It was part of what had drawn her to him, the way he was always so careful with words, so mysterious with what he chose to hold back and what he revealed. So she waited just behind him, her arms tucked into the sleeves of the jacket he'd loaned her, all awkward when they'd first left the club and started walking through the rain, like he couldn't decide if he was being tacky or romantic. When he didn't speak or move for what she thought must be a full minute, she finally opened her mouth.

"What is it, Sam?"

He frowned, slipped the key in the lock, then stopped again.

"I think my brother's home."

He'd talked about his brother, along with the rest of his family, on their first date. Older by four years. Worked as some kind of consultant in the classic car industry. They lived together in an apartment off campus. Dean hadn't gone to college. Bare bones, really.

"You have separate rooms, right?"

Sam nodded, a slight blush coloring his cheeks.

"Then what's the problem?"

"He's going to want to meet you."

Jess wanted to meet him. Brothers weren't nearly as intimidating as parents, and she liked Sam enough to even want to meet them, eventually. "I don't mind."

"He's." Sam put a full stop on the end of the word, like the rest of the sentence had escaped him. "He's a little."

"Is he dangerous?"

Sam shook his head sharply. "No. That's not it. It's just."

She put her hand on his, guiding it to turn the key. "Then it's okay. Really." She flashed him a smile and watched his shoulders lower and relax. "I want to meet him."

He let out a slow breath, then smiled in return. "Okay." And he opened the door.

The front door opened directly onto the living room, giving a profile view of the couch. A man -- Dean, clearly, in his mid-twenties and casually dressed -- slumped there with a glossy magazine, but had his face turned towards the door. He looked curious, alert, and when he spotted her over Sam's shoulder, he broke into a wide grin and lifted one hand from the magazine in a wave.

"Dean," Sam said, stepping to one side and lifting his hand as though to try and take the jacket, then lowering it after a moment. Jacket taking, apparently, fell under the "tacky" category. Jess didn't mind -- the jacket was warm and smelled of leather, cologne, and books. Like Sam. "This is Jess. Jess, my brother Dean."

Dean stood then, setting the magazine on the steamer-trunk-turned-coffee-table, already littered with car magazines, newspapers, and textbooks. He lifted his hand again in a wave, then turned his eyes to Sam, his hands fluttering about midway up his chest in quick, precise movements. Jess recognized it as sign language, but the movements were quick, and she was a good four years from the single class she'd taken. She felt her eyes widen slightly in surprise, then quickly schooled her expression and brought the smile out again.

"He says it's nice to meet you," Sam offered, an apology in his voice, and she nodded, making sure her face was turned straight towards Dean even as her eyes slid sideways to Sam's.

"It's nice to meet you, too."

They stood there like that for a moment, while Jess tried desperately not to stare, awkwardness hanging from all three of them the way Sam's jacket hung from her shoulders. Then Dean's hands moved again, and Jess recognized the gesture for "coffee". She hurried to speak before Sam translated, desperate to show that she wasn't completely overwhelmed or weirded out.

"Coffee would be great. Decaf?"

She felt Sam relax as Dean nodded, hands flickering in a few more gestures that she assumed translated to something like "one lump or two?"

"Two sugars. With cream."

Another nod from Dean, and a shutterflash of a smile, and then Dean was heading through the rounded arch that separated the living room from the kitchen and Jess let herself relax fully. She turned to Sam.

"Sorry," he said quickly. "I should've." And he fullstopped again, his hands coming up the way Dean's had, but fluttering idly, without purpose. She shook her head and laughed gently, putting her hands over his.

"It's okay, Sam. But. you could've told me Dean was deaf."

A clattering of ceramic came from the kitchen, and Sam coughed. "He's not. Just mute."

She felt her cheeks warm. "Oh." She wrinkled her nose. "Sorry. I shouldn't have assumed."

Sam shrugged, taking her hand and pulling her towards the couch. "It's okay. Everyone does."

She took one end of the couch and Sam sat down in a small, overstuffed arm chair just next to her. When Dean returned, three cups held easily in one hand, he took the middle of the couch, next to Jess, and she tried not to shift away from him. The proximity made sense a moment later, when Dean pulled a reporter's notebook and a pen from under one of the newspapers and set it on his knee between them, scribbling out a quick note.

_4 stuff Sam won't translate_

He grinned a little wickedly, and she heard Sam huff, and she relaxed, letting out a little laugh of her own. "You going to say something mean?"

_not about U_ Another wicked grin accompanied the note, along with a wink. His handwriting was loose but somehow structured, clear and easy to read but quick to write, each letter separated from the next. Sam's, she knew, was far messier, half-cursive, tight, and hurried.

"Dean," Sam said warningly, and Dean gestured without dropping the pen, a single movement that Jess, along with every other American over the age of ten, could recognize immediately. Sam scowled and Jess laughed again.

"That's not nice. He's your brother."

_Ur out of his league_

"But I like him, anyway."

They stayed there for about half an hour, the tension of the first meeting well and truly broken, as Dean flirted easily in text and facial expression with Jess, fitting his writing and signs into the conversation seamlessly. Jess liked him. He was the perfect counter-balance to Sam, goofy and casual where Sam was serious and proper, teasing harmlessly and getting smile after smile from his brother in a way no other person Jess had met could. When the conversation started to turn to classes, though, Dean set the notebook back on the coffee table, picked up the empty cups, and stood. Jess didn't need Sam's translation to figure out what he was doing.

"He, uh." Sam flushed. "Says he wants to give us some space." Dean's wicked grin-and-wink returned, and Jess knew that the actual words being signed had been far dirtier than what Sam was reporting. Sam lowered his chin and glared without rancor at his brother. "Good night, Dean."

Dean nodded, then held his hand out to Jess. She took it and smiled. "It was nice meeting you, Dean." Another nod, and he bent to brush his lips against her knuckles, none of Sam's awkwardness around old-fashioned gentlemanliness in his actions. Then he let her go, stepped around the coffee table, and clapped a hand to Sam's shoulder, hands flickering. Sam blushed again, and Dean's shoulders shook in a silent laugh as he went back into the kitchen.

Jess raised an eyebrow at Sam, resting her elbows on her knees. "What'd he say?"

"He asked if I had condoms."

Jess laughed and reached out to pat him on the knee. "Don't worry, I've got some in my purse."

Sam colored again, and Jess decided that his blush was the cutest, hottest thing she'd ever seen.

* * *

Jess and Sam dated for six more months, through the end of their sophomore year, and Jess met Dean several more times, usually on his way in or out of the apartment on some job or another, before Sam asked her to move in.

"You don't have to worry about rent. We've got some money. Dean doesn't even really have to work, he just likes it."

Jess had known that Sam was on a scholarship, but the money she hadn't heard about, until now. "I never would have pegged you for a trust fund kid."

Sam shrugged. "Our mom and dad set them up when we were little. Our birth mom and dad. That and the life insurance, and most of the money from selling the house. . . ."

Sam had mentioned early on in their relationship that he and Dean were adopted. He never spoke much about what had happened to his real parents, just that they'd died in a fire when he was a baby and that Dean's godparents, both professors at the University of Kansas, had taken them in.

"You don't have to explain," Jess said. "I'm just surprised, that's all." She was surprised a lot, by Sam, but only by the details he revealed. His actions never shocked her. She'd felt, when they'd first met in their Introduction to Literature class, like she'd known him all her life. Sam nodded, dropping his chin and hiding for a moment behind his long bangs. He looked young when he did that, like the gangly and awkward teenager he must have been in high school.

"So, do you want to?"

She reached out and put her fingers just under his chin, pushing up so she could catch his eyes, then smiled. "Of course I do."

His smile was bright, all teeth. When he grinned like that, Jess saw shades of the wild sense of humor he usually kept so carefully under wraps, and she fell in love with him all over again. She dreamed, sometimes, of seeing that smile on her children's faces. Along, maybe, with a wink or two picked up from their uncle.

"Dean owes me ten bucks."

She laughed. "I know he didn't think I'd say no."

Sam shook his head. "I didn't think I'd have the guts to ask."

Jess decided that she and his brother knew Sam far better than Sam himself did.

* * *

Dean could actually speak, Jess learned one evening, a little while after she first moved in. Not actual words, perhaps, but his vocal chords worked. She found out when Sam was trying to make a sauce for pasta, and sliced his finger open while chopping zucchini. His curse had been drowned out by a short, choked off howl from Dean, a feral sound of pure frustration and fear that made Jess shiver, and Dean had been at Sam's side in a moment, taking the knife from him and holding it with almost professional confidence in the few short moments before he dropped it in the sink. Sam flinched, probably more from the sound Dean made than the actual cut, which while deep, surely wasn't that threatening, and pulled his hand close to his chest.

"It's okay, Dean." He said it low and hurried, casting glances at Jess, who sat frozen at the kitchen table. "It's not bad."

Dean's teeth appeared in a grimace rather than a grin, and he held his hand out sharply for Sam's.

Jess stood. "I'll go get some band aids."

Sam flashed her a grateful look, even as he gave in and let Dean examine his finger. "Thanks."

Jess rushed out, the sound of Sam continuing to reassure his brother drifting after her. She went straight to the apartment's only bathroom and closed the door behind her, flattening her back against it and taking two quick, deep breaths. She liked Dean, he and Sam made her feel safe, but she couldn't get the sound of that howl out of her mind. She spent a few moments composing herself before she opened the medicine cabinet to grab the band aids and a tube of antibiotic cream. Dean had been more wounded by Sam's cut than Sam had. She'd come to realize, in the months since she'd met him, that his teasing and brash attitude hid a protectiveness of his younger brother, one that had probably led him to follow Sam out to California instead of staying in Kansas with their parents, but to see it demonstrated in such a basic, animal way had been a little frightening.

It made her feel like she was throwing herself into the middle of something old, like an anthropologist trying to slip into the culture of a primitive tribe.

She shook her shoulders like she could shake the feeling away, took another quick breath, and headed back into the kitchen. Sam was holding his finger under the faucet, and Dean was finishing chopping the vegetables, and Jess wrapped the cut and they went on with dinner, as though none of it had ever happened.

She didn't bring it up until that night in bed, her back pressed against Sam's chest, his breath hissing softly in her ear.

"Sam."

"Hmm."

"Why doesn't Dean talk?" He shifted against her, but didn't pull away, and she thought she could almost hear him thinking it over, weighing what to tell her. She twisted her head, then rolled to her back, her shoulder pressing gently into his sternum, and caught his eyes. "Tell me. I won't get upset. I just want to know."

He watched the ceiling for a moment before he spoke. "He used to talk. Aunt Carrie and Uncle Dan say he wouldn't shut up." Aunt Carrie and Uncle Dan were his adoptive parents, she knew, Dean's godparents. "Mom" and "Dad" were always reserved for his birth parents. "That was before Mom and Dad died."

Jess nodded, a thousand questions springing to mind. She rolled again instead of asking them, facing him and resting her hand on his hip in silent support.

"I've never heard him say anything. Just -- just what you heard, tonight. He's not -- he was hurt, that night. We're not sure how, but he hit his head, inhaled a lot of smoke. They thought it was PTSD at first. A lot of kids get quiet when something bad happens." He swallowed, eyes still on the ceiling, like the words he wanted were hidden there somewhere, underneath the paint. "Therapy got him out of his shell, but nothing they did could get him to talk. The doctors finally decided it was physical. Some kind of brain damage."

Jess let him fall silent, then, letting the new information sink in and wrap itself around the picture she had of Dean in her mind. She'd never thought much about what it must've been like for Dean, old enough to realize that something bad had happened to his family, but not old enough to completely understand. And to be that hurt at the same time. No wonder he had his moments. No wonder he clung to Sam the way he did. Sam shifted, wrapping his arm tighter around her waist. "Jess?"

"It's okay." It came out absently, and she forced herself to focus and repeated it with more conviction. "It's okay, Sam. You can tell me these things. It doesn't make me love you any less."

He smiled softly, leaning in to give her a brief, closed-lipped kiss. "I know. I do. Just. Not everyone gets it."

"I do," she said, closing her eyes.

"He's just a normal guy. Who doesn't speak."

She nodded. "I know, Sam. And you're just an extraordinary guy, who takes care of him."

She felt his breath whisper across her forehead in an almost silent chuckle. "Don't let him hear you say that. He thinks he takes care of me."

She smiled. "You take care of each other, then." She opened her eyes to look up at him. "Just make sure there's room for me in there too, okay?"

He tugged her closer, his jaw against her cheek bone. "Always."

* * *

After that night, Jess found herself in the library, often, going through books on psychology and the anatomy of the brain. She looked up everything she could find on muteness, aphasia, and the Broca and Wernicke areas, and how physical damage could affect a person's speech. She wasn't sure why -- it was about twenty years too late for a cure for Dean -- except that she could picture Sam doing the same thing as he grew up. It made her feel closer to him, somehow. Like if she could fully understand Dean, she could cement herself into Sam's life. At the start of their junior year, as Sam threw himself fully into the pre-law track, she signed up for psychology classes, and soon found herself looking at a double major, anthro and psych. She'd long dreamed of being an archaeologist, digging up the past like a female Indiana Jones, but now found herself more interested in the present. She knew she was being a little crazy, herself. She was changing her life and her future plans not even just for her boyfriend, but for her boyfriend's brother. If she'd heard that any of her friends were doing such a thing, she'd have freaked.

But she couldn't help but feel, the more time she spent with Sam, that he was her future. She loved him, the way he stressed out over his classes, the way he seemed to always know a little something about everything, the way he was so protective of his odd little family and their dark history. And she liked Dean, already thought of him as a sort of brother. She liked the way he seemed to fit seamlessly into social situations, despite his speech impairment. She even liked how obsessive he was about his car, a classic Chevy he'd apparently rebuilt when he was a teenager. She also, she had to admit, liked the fact that he was often absent from the apartment for up to a week at a time on his business trips. She was pretty sure she'd have gone insane, if he were home all of the time.

Needless to say, it surprised the hell out of her when, in the middle of one of those week-long trips out of town, she found him curled up in the corner of the school library, a laptop on his lap and a book of American folklore on the table next to him. She was so startled she dropped her books. His head snapped up and his eyes widened, and she could do no more than gape at him for several moments.

He lifted his hands from the keyboard defensively, eyes casting to either side, and she knew that this was more than him getting back earlier than planned. She hurried over.

"Dean," she hissed, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb any of the other students. It was getting close to finals, and she knew how crazy they could be if their studying was interrupted.

His hands dropped back to the keyboard and he typed rapidly. A mechanical voice sounded from the laptop's speakers. _I can explain._

"I thought you were in Oklahoma this week."

_Finished early._ The computer's voice was completely flat, and for once, Dean's face was expressionless.

"Don't lie to me." She stepped in close, leaning to peer at his screen, and though he alt-tabbed quickly out of the web browser he'd had open, she caught sight of what looked like an obituary before the word processing program took up the entire screen. "What are you doing?"

He sighed and took his hands off the keyboard. _Research_, he signed. She'd been getting better with ASL since moving in with them, but still could only do single words or simple phrases at a time.

"That didn't look like a classic car, to me."

He closed his eyes, reaching up to rub his nose, then started typing. _It's not. Just a hobby. Got back early, didn't want to go back to the apartment yet._ A pause, then: _Don't tell Sam._

"Why not?"

He looked up at her, his eyes pleading. _He doesn't like it._

"Well, it is pretty morbid."

That got a sardonic grin and a half-shrug.

"Did you know them? The person in the article."

He shook his head. _Just a hobby._

"Your hobby is looking up deaths." Another shrug. Jess sighed. "Are you coming home, tonight?" He paused, then nodded.

_Just got back. Will call Sam, later._

She shook her head. She knew he was hiding something -- who looked up obituaries for a hobby? -- but so long as he didn't bring whatever it was home with him or drag Sam into it, she figured it was none of her business. "We're going out, tonight. It's Brian's birthday."

He nodded. _See you late or tomorrow, then._

"Yeah. I'll see you."

* * *

Jess started noticing things, after that, things that she'd always just shrugged off before. Like the fact that Dean's bookcase had a lot of folklore and religious texts in it for a guy mostly interested in cars and girls. She noticed that when Dean did the grocery shopping, he always put the bags on the backseat of his car, rather than in the trunk. She noticed that his luggage, when he left on one of his trips, tended to clank, though she supposed that that could be car parts. She noticed that while Kansas and Palo Alto newspapers always ended up on the steamer trunk in the living room, Dean would occasionally take another paper, one that didn't quite resemble the Palo Alto Daily News or the Lawrence Journal World, into his room. She noticed that, sometimes, when he thought she and Sam weren't home, he'd watch the History Channel or Ghost Chasers, his notebook poised on his knee.

She never told Sam, though. She didn't like keeping secrets from him, but Dean's business was Dean's business, and she didn't want to cause any trouble between the brothers.

Dean's phone beeped, occasionally, in the middle of the night. He couldn't take phone calls, of course, but he was an avid text-messager, and once or twice, as her and Sam's junior year drew to a close, he'd check his messages at midnight and be gone from the apartment the next morning.

Dean's "hobby", it seemed, took up more of his life than he was willing to admit to anyone.

Still, Jess thought, it was none of her business. Sam was gearing up for the LSATs and law school interviews, and she had enough schoolwork of her own, with her double major, to keep her busy.

In October of their senior year, Dean left town for the entire month, claiming a job in Jericho had gone pear-shaped. He texted or emailed daily, mostly to demand updates on Sam's test scores and plans, but never said much about what he was up to. Then on Halloween, as Jess was getting her costume together, the apartment phone rang, and whoever was on the other end left Sam silent and fuming.

She stepped up behind him, nurse's uniform left open across her chest in her worry, and put her arms around his waist as he hung up the phone.

"Sam, what is it?"

"That was Dean's work." He spoke through gritted teeth and didn't relax against her the way he usually would. "They're asking where he is. He hasn't been in all week."

Jess frowned. "He's in Jericho."

Sam nodded once, his hands clenching. "Yeah, well. Apparently he isn't there for them." He broke away from her sharply, storming into his room. She hurried after him.

"Sam --" She froze when she saw him packing. "Where are you going?"

"Jericho."

"Sam, come on. Try texting him. I'm sure there's a reasonable --"

Sam shook his head. "He's done this before."

Jess frowned. "What?"

"In high school." He stopped his frantic packing for a moment, his head dropping forward. "Right after he finished fixing up his car. His junior year. He went missing for two months."

"People do stupid things in high school, Sam. I'm sure this isn't --"

"It's the _same thing._" Sam started packing again, throwing handfuls of clothes into his bag without checking what they were or if they matched. "He told us it was a school trip. Going to DC for a week. He'd page or email every day to check in, but then the school called. He'd managed to get them to think he was sick, but they were concerned about how long he'd been absent. And we couldn't find him."

Jess opened her mouth to speak, but had no idea what to say.

"When he came back, he had a broken arm and stitches in his back. He wouldn't tell anyone where he went or what he was doing. Aunt Carrie and Uncle Dan put him back in therapy."

Jess knew what to say to that. "You told me he wasn't dangerous."

"He isn't." Sam zipped his duffel bag up harder than was necessary. "Not to anyone except himself."

"You're telling me your brother's crazy." She wondered if she should be more surprised than she was.

"Guess so."

"And you're going after him."

"Yeah."

"Sam, you have an interview on Monday. If he's really missing or in trouble, we should call the police."

"They won't help him." Sam sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Look, I just need to check. I can probably catch a bus down to Jericho, see if he's really there, and if he is, bring him home. If I can't find him, I'll call the authorities."

Jess sighed and reminded herself that Sam's love and worry for his brother was one of the things she loved about him. "Promise you'll be back by Monday."

"I promise."

"And be careful. Don't let him --"

"I won't." He picked up his duffel bag and turned to look at her, his face falling. "I'm sorry. I know you were really looking forward to this party."

"It's okay," she said, though she wasn't sure if it was. "You need to take care of Dean."

He bent down, catching her lips with his own in a quick, passionate kiss. "I love you."

She smiled slightly. "I love you, too. I'll miss you."

He pulled her into a quick hug, then before she knew it, was out the door.

* * *

She went to the party without him, and had a terrible time. She spent the rest of the weekend leaving messages on his cellphone and searching through the apartment, looking for some clue Dean might've left that he was going nuts. She found his old newspapers and print outs of missing persons cases and obituaries from several places around the country -- many of them in towns he'd said he had business in -- but nothing on Jericho. She wondered if he was some kind of criminal. She wondered if he was some kind of undercover FBI agent. She wondered if she was going as crazy as he apparently had.

By Sunday night, Sam still wasn't home, and she started to wonder if she'd wasted the last two years of her life on a case of hopeless romanticism. She turned on the shower and stared at herself in the mirror over her dresser, touching at the bags forming under her eyes and trying not to cry.

The lights flickered, and a man appeared so suddenly in the reflection that she shrieked, jumping back and spinning around.

There was no one there.

She closed her eyes and rubbed at them with her fingers. She was definitely going mad.

A breath whispered in her ear. _Jessica._ The lights went out and suddenly she was being pushed back by nothing at all, pressed against the wall in her white nightgown like a flower between the pages of a book.

The man stood in the center of the bedroom, at the foot of the bed, dressed in shadow, his eyes glinting an eerie yellow. She tried to take a breath to scream, but couldn't get enough air.

"Pretty little Jess," the man said. He lifted one hand, and the pressure holding her to the wall increased until she saw stars. "You know, he was going to ask you to marry him?"

_What?_

"That's right, Sammy's all love-struck. Can't have that."

She strained her senses, trying to hear if the voice was familiar. The build was almost right for Dean, but Dean didn't speak, and he couldn't -- _no one_ could just pin someone to a wall like this. It was impossible. She had to be dreaming. Or crazy. The pressure increased, rolling upwards from her feet to her head, squeezing her hard against the wall, and she realized with a start that she was moving. Her feet weren't on the floor any more, and the man was standing below her, hand still raised.

"What?" It was little more than a wheeze. The man laughed.

"Don't bother that pretty little head of yours. This'll all be over soon."

Her head hit the ceiling, and still the pressure pushed her upwards. Her neck bent, and then her shoulders, and then she was sliding along until she hung, suspended over the bed. In the back of her mind, she registered a door opening.

"Sam," she whispered. The man clucked his tongue.

"Shhh," the man said. "Not quite yet."

Footsteps crossed the living room to the kitchen, then to the bathroom, where the shower was still running. A pause, then a knock on the bedroom door.

"What do you say," the man said, seemingly directly into her ear. "Should we let him in?"

_Someone help me,_ Jess thought. _Please, God, someone help me._

"Could be fun," the man said. And the door opened, and Dean walked in. He froze two steps into the room, staring at the man, and for a moment, Jess could have cheered. He _saw_ him. She wasn't completely insane.

"You." It was a hoarse whisper, roughened and battered by years of ill-use, but she recognized the voice that had cried out like an animal that day in the kitchen. She wanted to shout, or whimper, or do anything but stick to the ceiling and struggle to breathe. Dean was shaking, she realized. The man was laughing.

"Hello, Dean. Been awhile."

The sound Dean made next wasn't a word in any language Jess knew, just an inarticulate cry of rage as he barreled forward, then flew back, smacking hard into the wall. The man had barely moved.

"Now now, Dean. That's no way to greet an old friend." The man looked up at her, and Dean looked up as well, his eyes going wide and round, his mouth working soundlessly. The man laughed again. "That's right, Dean. Just like Daddy." The man winked at Jess. "Didn't know that, did you, girl. Didn't know that this is how Daddy Winchester met his end, stuck fast to a ceiling in little Sammy's nursery. Dean did." Dean was struggling to his feet, his face twisted into a grimace, and the man gestured casually, throwing Dean back into the wall. Jess found herself imagining him as a small boy, long ago and far away, struggling to stop this man the way he was now, and she wanted to scream. "We're missing some details though, aren't we, Dean. Like this." The man made a slicing motion with his hand, and pain streaked across Jess's stomach and she found the breath to cry out.

"No," Dean said, his voice as broken and hoarse as it was before. He kept talking, mixed up syllables clashing and stuttering against each other.

"Is that Latin?" The man sounded amused. "Oh, Dean. Too little, too late." Dean smacked back into the wall again and stayed there, the tendons in his neck standing out as he strained as though against some unnatural grip. "Is that any way to mind your mother?"

Jess's mind was spinning as she tried desperately to connect the dots. But the pain in her stomach made her want to throw up and vertigo threatened to overwhelm her and spots were building up in her vision and she couldn't make one and one equal two, much less figure out this bizarre equation. The man seemed to be ignoring her, now, though the force holding her to the ceiling was as strong as ever. He stepped up close to Dean, who flinched away as best he could, still stuttering out badly pronounced Latin phrases.

"And you'd been doing so well. What was it she said, that night, when she dropped you off with 'Aunt Carrie'?" The man's voice changed, suddenly, taking on the higher tone of a grown woman. "'I have to go, Dean. You take care of Sam. And don't tell anyone about what you saw. _Don't. Say. A word._'" The man reached out to run his fingers over Dean's cheek, and Jess heard Dean whimper. "How long did you keep that up, huh Dean? Only to ruin it now with your Latin." The man suddenly stepped back, stretching his arms out to either side. "But, it's almost show time. Shame, I'd love to take the time to kill you properly. Still, someone's gotta take care of Sammy, right?"

And the man vanished, but Jess still couldn't move. Dean stayed against the wall, chest heaving in silent sobs, and Sam's voice rang out from the living room.

"Jess?"

_Sam, help me, get me down, help us, please, Sam, help me,_

"Dean?"

_I'm going to die, I'm going to die, Sam, helpmeplease,_

The door to the room opened, blocking Dean from sight as Sam walked in. "Jess?"

_Please, Sam, please, I'm going to die,_

Sam sighed and sat down on the bed. He flopped over backwards, his eyes closed. He looked exhausted.

_SampleasehelpI'mgoingtodieplease_

A drop of blood hit his forehead, then another, and he opened his eyes, staring straight up into Jess's. Her vision tunneled to his face as his mouth fell open. "No!"

_SampleaseI'mgoingtodiehelpSamhelpplease_

Pain and light erupted around Jess. The last thing she heard was a muffled roar from Dean as he finally broke away from the wall and the door. The last thing she saw was Sam's terrified face and Dean's arms reaching for him.

_HelpSampleaseDEANHELPSAM_

And then there was nothing.


	2. Second Skin

**Warnings:** AU, some language  
**Spoilers:** General for season one  
**Author's note: **Still with me? Well, here's the second part of the 'verse. Apologies for the craziness of this updating process -- this is what I get for realizing at the last minute that these files didn't have the chapter titles in the text.

* * *

**Second Skin**

Bobby bit back a curse when he heard the heavy growl of a familiar engine making its way up his drive, then let the second one out when he heard Rumsfeld start to yowl. The dog knew Dean Winchester perfectly well, so his barking could mean one of two things. First, that Dean was possessed -- Rumsfeld had been trained to throw a royal fit when he scented sulfur, though it was as of yet untested. Bobby liked to think that demons knew better than to mess with him on his home front. If this was the case, then Bobby was well-prepared, and it might just be a nice change, if a demon possessing a body couldn't get said body to speak. Second, and he figured, more likely, was that Dean had brought a friend with him. Mind you, as far as Bobby knew, the boy didn't have any friends, aside from his brother, but it was always possible he'd ended up with a victim tagging along or something like it. Maybe a possessed one. He could never tell, with Dean.

The only sounds from the yard were Rumsfeld's. He'd have to go out and check.

As it turned out, Bobby'd hit the nail on the head with that second guess. Dean stood by the driver's side door, his hands folded casually on the roof, his head turned in profile towards the trunk. A small smirk twisted up the visible side of his mouth, though from his stance, Bobby guessed he was exhausted. He was watching a taller kid, with floppy hair that hid his face from Bobby's view, whom Rumsfeld had pinned against the back quarter-panel on the passenger side. The kid had his hands in the air, wide open like it'd matter to the dog that he was unarmed, his head twitching to the side regularly, towards Dean, as though he was on the edge of begging for help, but refused to take his eyes off the snarling creature that was damned near choking itself on its chain.

Bobby gave himself a few moments to savor the scene -- it wasn't often that he got to just let Rumsfeld do his guard dog duty without worrying he was scaring off a potential customer -- then let out a short, high whistle.

"Rumsfeld! Down!"

Rumsfeld didn't hesitate, going from cruel, vicious beast to sedate, old dog in less than a second, dropping to his haunches and letting his mouth hang open. Strands of saliva dripped towards the dirt. The tall boy dropped his hands and slumped against the car. Bobby could hear his relieved breath from the porch.

Dean had looked up almost as attentively as the dog had at the whistle, and it took most of Bobby's considerable self-control to keep from whistling again at the full sight of the kid. The side of his face that had been turned away was mottled red and blue with bruising, and with the smirk gone, his whole bearing drooped, as though it was too much to hold himself up against the world any more. Then he straightened his shoulders, cast his exhaustion aside in a clearly practiced move, and started around the car to stand next to the taller boy.

"Dean," Bobby said, dropping his chin in a single nod. "Good to see you again."

Dean nodded back, his hands going into his pockets. It was going to be one of _those_ "conversations". He brushed the other boy with his shoulder in what was probably a reassuring gesture. The tall kid looked just as tired as Dean did, if not more, though he didn't bear the same bruises. Bobby stepped down off the porch and walked over, hand held out cordially.

"I'm guessing you're Sam?"

The tall kid looked up, slightly startled, and nodded as well. Figured. Might as well change his sign to "Singer Auto Self Service Yard and Mute Retreat".

"Good to meet you. Dean's told me a fair bit about you."

The kid's -- Sam's -- head dropped again, and his "nice trick" was barely audible, but it was words, and Bobby filed them away. Apparently Dean's muteness wasn't genetic or contagious. The kid was just that tired.

"Well, come on in. You both look like you could use a drink." That got a nod from both of them, though Sam was shooting Dean curious looks that told Bobby loud and clear the boy hadn't let his brother in on just where they'd been going.

Yeah, this was going to be interesting.

* * *

Dean tossed back the shot of holy water like an old pro and passed the glass back over to Bobby without a single questioning gesture. Sam looked at his with narrowed, confused eyes, and shot a glance at Dean. Dean shrugged.

"Go on, then," Bobby said, waving a hand towards the glass. "It's only holy water."

Sam's confusion deepened, and he didn't touch the glass. Dean rolled his eyes and lifted his hands, moving them too quickly for Bobby to make out what he was saying. Sam shook his head, and Dean's shoulders rose and dropped in a silent huff. Bobby tapped the table with two fingers.

"Humor an old man, Sam."

Sam looked to Bobby, then back to Dean, who nodded. Then, with a pinched expression that let anyone who knew or cared that he was doing this entirely under protest, he lifted the glass and drank the holy water in two short sips. He neither steamed nor flinched, and Bobby nodded, taking the glasses back and filling them with whiskey.

"So. What brings you boys by, then?" Bobby looked straight at Dean, not expecting Sam to know the answer. Dean rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and kept them there, but lifted his hands again, this time gesturing slowly and precisely in single words to make sure Bobby followed.

_Fire. Ceiling._

Hell. "Your Aunt and Uncle?"

A shake of the head. _Girlfriend_ and a thumb jerked at Sam. Sam stared down into his shot.

"Hell," Bobby said aloud this time. "I'm sorry, kid. That's a tough way to lose someone."

Sam nodded, his brow still creased with confusion and his body heavy with grief. It had to still be very fresh, since last Bobby'd heard, Dean was working a case and all had been well in Sam's world. He looked from his brother to Bobby and back, then spoke, voice as quiet as it had been out in the yard. "What -- I -- what's with the holy water?"

Dean tossed back the shot of whiskey and set the glass hard on the table, fingers flicking at the rim aimlessly. Bobby looked from him to his brother and back, then settled back in his chair. "Dean, I got some boxes in my truck that need unloading. I'd do it myself, but my back ain't what it used to be. Do you think you could do me the favor?"

Dean nodded quickly, taking the task for what it was: an excuse to get out of the room and the conversation, which they both knew wasn't going to go well if they had to keep to simple words or wait for Dean to write it all out. Sam opened his mouth to protest, but fell silent at a single swipe of Dean's hand and a pointed look. Dean left the room, and Sam watched him go, turned sideways in his seat, hand clenched around his still-full shot glass. Bobby waited. After several moments, Sam turned slowly back to the table and met Bobby's gaze.

Bobby waited more.

Just before he was about to give up and get this conversation started himself, Sam let out a slow breath and spoke.

"You work with my brother?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"This is a salvage yard."

"It is."

"He's in classic cars."

Bobby simply nodded. He was still waiting for "the" question. He didn't have to wait much longer.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Bobby sighed and adjusted the brim of his hat. "What's your brother told you?"

"Nothing. He just --" Sam swallowed, a look of guilt and anger slipping over his features for just a moment before he schooled his expression. Bobby filed the look away and waited. "He said he was taking me to see a friend. Who could help."

"And that's what he did."

"No offense," Sam said, disbelief and cynicism not so much coloring his voice as coating it. "But how can a car parts salesman help with Jess?"

Jess must be the girlfriend. "Dean mentioned a fire."

Sam nodded.

"And a ceiling."

Sam tensed, then nodded again, slower this time.

Dean hadn't told the kid a single, damned thing. Bobby growled low in his throat, then sat up and rested his hands on the table. "Let's start at the beginning, Sam. You tell me exactly what you remember happening."

"I'm sorry, but I don't see --"

"I'll explain. I just want to hear the story in your words, first." Bobby's tone was gentle but firm, brooking no argument, rather, he felt, like a professor might do with a difficult student. He knew Sam was a fan of school -- he hoped it would help him relax.

It did. "Dean had a job. Said he was going to Jericho, California to work, was gone about a month."

Bobby knew that much. Constance Welch and her victims had been a tough one -- Dean had only planned to be away about a week, but finding the connection between the victims and the cause of Constance's anger had been harder than either of them had expected. It wasn't the research -- Dean did well enough on that front as well as the more physical side of the job, shooting and fighting and digging and burning with the best of them. It was the other part of the job that caused him trouble, the one that took up a good three-quarters or more of most any hunt: talking to people. Bobby usually sent the kid on hunts that were already clean-cut, simple salt and burns that might have a twist in where the last body part was hidden, but nothing that couldn't be found out in a Hall of Records or police station if you really tried. Jericho, Dean had found himself, and insisted on doing the legwork for, and Bobby hadn't had the heart to argue. The boy could do pretty well once people got comfortable, he had the charm and wit needed to keep a conversation going and could generally compensate well for his handicap, but getting the trust he needed to get started was another story altogether. People just didn't expect cops or reporters or officials to be mute. It was a hell of a hurdle to get over, and it'd taken Dean a month and one last missing person to do it.

Bobby nodded and gestured for Sam to continue.

"He, uh. About a week ago, I got a call. From his office in Palo Alto. They wanted to know where he was and why he hadn't reported for work."

Hell. Dean had blown his cover.

"So I went to go find him. Took a bus down to Jericho, spent the whole weekend asking around. Lots of people had seen him, but I was always a couple steps behind." Sam swallowed. "He, uh. He was using fake credit cards."

This was obviously a sticking point for Sam, though it didn't surprise Bobby in the least. Dean had plenty of money from his cover job, and was perfectly capable of getting his own credit line, but on a job, he'd want to distance himself from his "official" identity as much as possible. One of the run-arounds for the no-talking issue was to up the illegal end of the job -- more B&E, especially -- and going around calling himself by his real name when he was doing that sort of thing was just stupid. Bobby kept his expression calm and open, and nodded. Sam sighed.

"I lost track of him and had stuff to do back home. I figured -- I figured he was an adult, and I couldn't tell him what to do, any more. So I headed back home. Didn't get in until pretty late."

"When was this?"

"Uh, last Sunday. Just under a week ago."

"November second?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Bobby shook his head. "Just getting the facts straight. Go on."

"Okay." Sam fixed him with an odd look, but then turned his gaze back down to the shot glass. "When I got home, I saw Dean's car parked outside."

"The Impala."

"Yeah. And I -- I was pissed, you know? I'd spent the whole weekend looking for him, and here he was, back where he should've been all along. I went in, but I couldn't find him -- heard the shower running. Didn't see Jess, either, so I figured I'd go to bed and talk to them the next day. I went into my room and lay down and then." He broke off there, closing his eyes, his throat working like he was trying to force the words to come but couldn't find the strength.

Bobby didn't touch him, just stayed where he was, lowered his voice and said "It's okay, Sam. Whatever happened, I ain't here to judge."

Sam nodded, eyes still screwed up tight, and gasped "That's not it." Bobby held silent and waited. "It's just. God, it was horrible."

Bobby had been in this position plenty of times in his life, and knew there wasn't a single thing he could say that would make this any easier on the kid. He just had to wait it out. Finally, Sam seemed to get his act together, and he continued.

"I felt something hit my head. Like rain. I opened my eyes and -- and she. Jess. Jessica. She was on the ceiling. Bleeding. That's what hit me, her blood. She looked terrified. And then." He swallowed again, his voice shaking, then opened his eyes and looked right at Bobby. "She burst into flames."

Bobby let the silence hang for a moment. "And then?"

Sam shook his head. "And then what?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"And then the apartment was on fire. What do you think 'and then what'?"

"How'd you get out?"

"Dean. He -- he was just suddenly there and grabbing me. He didn't even look up, he just grabbed me and pushed me out. He didn't." Another swallow, and Sam's voice took on a strangled tone, his eyes wet. "He didn't even _try_ to save her. He just pushed me out."

The anger in Sam's voice was hard to hear, and Bobby thought of the bruises he'd seen on Dean's face. He wondered just what had passed between the two boys after they'd gotten out of that apartment.

"It ain't his fault, Sam."

"How do you know? You know him that well? 'Cause he's never even mentioned you to me. I've known Dean my entire life. He's carried lighters around since he was seventeen, but he doesn't smoke. He disappeared for a _month_, lied about why he was going, and just happened to get back just in time for my girlfriend -- for Jess to --"

Bobby reached out, then, grabbing hold of Sam's hand in a tight, unyielding grip, and he waited for Sam to meet his gaze again. He kept his voice low, in that soft, professorial tone and said "It wasn't his fault."

Sam stared at him, letting out a soft sob behind his closed lips. Bobby held his gaze and his hand, never wavering in his determination.

"Then whose fault was it?"

And that was the 64,000 question, wasn't it. Bobby released his hand, nodded to his flask of holy water which he'd left on the table. "What do you know about demons?"

* * *

Two hours later, Bobby found the boys sacked out in the living room, Dean stretched and sprawled on the couch in a position that was only too familiar, Sam curled tight on himself on the floor by Dean's head. Dean's face was burrowed into the cushions, his legs bent at the knee so that his feet stuck up over the arm, one boot off, the sock grayed with age and showing skin through a hole on the ball of his foot, the other boot loosened and almost dangling, pulled off the heel but still clinging to the rest of the foot. He still wore his jacket. He'd probably fallen asleep not long after he'd brought the single box in from Bobby's truck.

Sam was awake, his head leaning against the cushion, his eyes on his brother. He didn't look up when Bobby came in, but he could tell by the stiffening of the kid's body that he knew he was there.

"He asleep?"

Sam nodded. "It's good. He hasn't slept much, lately."

"You look like you could use a few hours, yourself."

He shook his head. "I'm not tired." It was a lie so obvious that there was no need to call him on it. "I just. How did you know all that? About our mom and dad?"

"He told me. Sort of." Bobby shrugged and grabbed himself a seat on an old campfire stool. Dean was effectively taking up the only comfortable sitting space in the room. "Wouldn't go into much detail, figure he can't remember all that much. He was young, then, wasn't he?"

Sam nodded. "Four. I was just a baby."

"I know."

"He got me out. They're not even really sure _how_, since Uncle Dan says he was half-dead himself. I'm . . . I'm kinda surprised he remembers at all."

"Something like that can stick with a person, if it's important enough."

"But -- the ceiling. He really remembers that?"

"Near as I can tell. Put a lot of it together from other cases I've gotten wind of. I follow a lot of accident reports and the like, and met a couple people with similar stories about nursery fires."

"This is really what you do? You . . . hunt . . . supernatural things?"

"When I ain't selling car parts."

"And Dean does it, too."

"For almost ten years, now."

Sam looked up. "You still haven't told me. How you met him."

Bobby smiled slightly. For all the shit Dean had put him through over the years, it was a decent enough memory, and from a time when none of his memories seemed decent enough. "He was probably about seventeen. Just turned or thereabouts. You'd've probably noticed, he was with me for awhile. Just after he finished fixing up that car of his."

Sam nodded. "He went missing. Like he did this time. Told our parents and the school different things and just ran away. He was -- was he . . . hunting?"

"Nah. Not at first, I don't think. You know how he got that car?"

Sam shrugged. "He bought it when he turned sixteen. He'd been saving up for a car for years."

Bobby laughed softly, ruefully. He wasn't sure why he was surprised, any more, at how much the kid passed out on his couch had kept from his family. "It was given to him, Sam. Only, he doesn't know by who. Someone left it at the auto shop where he worked."

"Mike's. Our dad used to own part of it."

"That's right. Thing was busted up but good, but someone dropped it off anyway. Nothing on it but a note saying 'For Dean', the way he tells it. Says he wasn't sure if he should keep it, but it reminded him of your mom and dad, so he did. Checked out the VIN to make sure it wasn't stolen, of course, then got to work fixing it up. When he got it done, he headed out to track down who'd given it to him."

Sam frowned, looking back at his brother. "How? He was seventeen."

"Dunno if you've noticed, but that brother of yours has got a decent head on his shoulders, when he wants to use it for more'n a battering ram. Kid's got one of the best eyes for patterns and connections I seen in a long time. Dunno exactly how he did it, but he did it."

"And that lead him to you."

"Nope. That lead him to Omaha. Right in the middle of a werewolf problem."

Sam's eyes widened. "Werewolves."

"That's right. I was in town, then, too. Saved your brother's ass just before he was about to get his heart ripped out through his spine."

"The stitches --"

"And the arm. Got that trying to defend himself, near as I can tell. Did a pretty good job of it, too."

"He's taken classes."

"And started fights."

"Yeah. That, too."

Bobby nodded, leaning his elbows on his knees. "Well, kid naturally enough wanted to know what the hell hit 'im, and wouldn't take a lie for an answer. I talked him into going home, but next thing I knew, he'd tracked _me_ down, writing letters and sending emails, trying to get as much info about werewolves and other nasties as he could. Couldn't get the idea of hunting out of his head, so I finally figured it'd be better if he were prepared, at least. Hooked him up with a few guys more local to him, sent a couple jobs his way. These days, it's about even odds whether he's wanting a hunt or some car parts." Bobby lifted his chin, feeling an odd wash of pride as he looked Dean over again, then slapped his hands down onto his thighs. "That's enough from me, though. You're gonna crash, kid, probably sooner rather than later, and I got a camp cot in my back room that'll be a damned sight more comfortable than that floor."

Sam looked for a moment like he was about to object, but then lifted one shoulder and pushed himself slowly to his feet. He brushed off his pants, then paused, eyes skimming over to Bobby. "This 'hunting'. It's dangerous?"

"Most extreme sort there is."

"But people do it."

"If they didn't, we'd be a lot more screwed than we are."

"Could -- do you think I could learn?"

Bobby ran a hand over his beard. The last thing he needed was to become some guru to a bunch of over-excited adrenaline junkies. Still, if Dean was any indication, Sam would probably do it anyway. "You could. Ask your brother when he wakes up. And get your ass to bed."

Sam smiled slightly and gave a sardonic "yes sir," before heading in the direction Bobby indicated. Bobby watched him go, hands shoved into the pockets of his old down vest.

"I know you didn't sleep through that, Winchester."

Dean shifted only slightly, freeing up one hand to wiggle his fingers in the air.

"How long you been awake?"

A slight shrug. Bobby leaned over to shake his shoulder.

"Dammit, boy, sit up if you're gonna talk to me."

The finger wiggling became somehow petulant, but Dean at least rolled over. Bobby winced as he caught sight of the bruises, again, his own hand lifting slightly, though he stopped himself before he touched them.

"He do that to you?"

Dean looked away, and Bobby knew the answer.

"Hell, kid. It wasn't your fault."

Dean moved to roll over, and Bobby flicked him in the ear. That got an outraged look, just what he'd been going for.

"You listen to me, you idiot, there wasn't a damned thing you could've done. Not now, and not then. You got me?"

Dean closed his eyes, his brows drawing together in concentration, and he spoke. "Tried."

Bobby startled. "Holy hell."

Dean winced, hand coming up to rub at his throat, and Bobby realized that the cracked, strained sound was probably painful to make. Still, Dean tried again.

"Latin."

"You tried an exorcism?" Bobby hazarded. Dean nodded, and Bobby shook his head. "You ever tried one before?" A headshake. "You even heard one pronounced, or only read 'em?" Dean closed his eyes and lifted two fingers and Bobby groaned. "Hell, kid. You can't go up against a demon armed with a language you can't speak."

Dean's hands came up, his actual voice apparently abandoned. _I know Latin._

"You can read Latin, you mean. Write it, maybe. Maybe even hear it and understand. That don't mean you can speak it. You of all people should know that."

Dean's chest rose and fell in a silent sigh, and he turned his eyes away. Bobby changed the subject.

"How long have you been able to talk?"

Dean didn't answer.

"This new, or something you been hiding?"

He still didn't answer. Bobby gave up. If there was one thing he'd learned in the past decade, it was that he couldn't get Dean to budge when he really didn't want to.

"Well. Either way, it still ain't your fault. Something's got its eyes on you boys. Your mom and dad were the start. If we want you two to survive, we got work to do."

Dean opened his eyes then, a look of hope sparking them back to life, and he nodded. Bobby reached out to rub his shoulder again, then pushed himself to his feet. "Go back to sleep, kid. Tomorrow we're gonna start training your brother."


	3. Silent Water

**Warnings:** AU, some language  
**Spoilers:** "Dead in the Water"  
**Author's note:** This sucker has a slightly different structure than the previous two. I was absolutely amazed (in a good way) by the response it got when first posted over on LiveJournal. I hope you enjoy it as well.

* * *

**Silent Water**

"So, Lucas. What do you think Granddad would like for lunch?"

Andrea looked up from the sink where she was washing dishes and turned her head towards her son, who sat at the kitchen table, hoping he'd answer. Hoping this time he'd at least look up, acknowledge that she was speaking to him even if he didn't make eye contact, but Lucas just sat there, scribbling a wide black spiral on a piece of yellow construction paper, like there was nothing else in the world.

She'd expected it, had even started, just barely, to get used to it, but she couldn't help feel like her heart was breaking a little, every time her little boy ignored her.

She wished Chris was still here. He and Lucas had always been close -- she remembered thinking how lucky she was, that her husband was so interested in everything their son did, even when it wasn't what Chris himself might pick to do. Lucky. Right. Except now Chris was gone and Lucas was -- he was there, but he was gone, too. He'd left her just as much as Chris had on that lake.

She let out a soft sigh, quiet enough that she didn't think Lucas would hear, even if he were listening, and looked forward again, out the window, through the trees to where she could just make out the flash of the sunlight on the water of the lake, then jerked her eyes back down to the sink again and watched the suds shrink into the drain. Once she thought she could do it without her voice breaking, she spoke again, plastering a firm smile across her face. "Maybe baloney? Come on over here, you can help me make some sandwiches."

He still didn't look up, so she brought the bread and the meat and the mayo to him, setting them out on the table near his stack of paper, as though he'd agreed to help.

Just in case. Who knew? Maybe this time it would work. Maybe this time, Lucas would come back to her.

* * *

_"So, Sam. What do you think Dean would like for lunch?"_

_Carrie looked down at the four year old who was pushing a toy fire truck around and around their tiny kitchen. He stopped making his puttering noises and looked up at her._

_"Peanut butter."_

_"Just peanut butter?"_

_"And banana." Sam turned back to his firetruck and Carrie laughed softly. Peanut butter and banana was Sam's favorite._

_"You sure about that?"_

_"Uh huh?"_

_"How do you know?"_

_"He told me."_

_She bit back a sigh. Dean hadn't told anyone anything in four years. Even using the sign language his therapist had finally taught him, he only ever answered questions. Except to Sam._

_"If I asked Dean when he got home what he wanted for lunch, is that what he'd say?"_

_Sam nodded. "Uh huh."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_Sam frowned. "I like peanut butter and banana."_

_"But is it what _Dean_ likes?"_

_"Dean likes what I like."_

_And Carrie didn't argue. Because that, as far as she could tell, was the truth._

_"Well, alright then. Peanut butter and banana it is."_

* * *

They didn't look like any Fish and Wildlife officials she'd ever seen, but she supposed that must be because they were out of uniform. Either way, they were handsome.

She bit her lip as soon as the thought crossed her mind. She knew that Chris wouldn't want her to be alone, would want her to be happy, but even thinking about anyone else felt like a betrayal, somehow. There were days when she wanted to hate him, for leaving her alone, for making her have to second guess her thoughts this way, but those thoughts hurt almost as much as thinking about other men did.

She wasn't ready, yet. She hadn't been ready to lose him, either. Hadn't been ready to lose any of it.

And this was why she'd moved in with Dad. Because she couldn't always stay focused. Her thoughts had a tendency to wander to places that made her chest ache and her throat go tight. But she had Lucas, what little was left of him, and she had to hold herself up and be strong for him. So she let her dad hold her up, lend her his strength, and pretended it was enough.

And anyway, Lucas was pressing against her leg, and the tall one was finishing up with her father, and the shorter one was looking down at Lucas, a small smile on his lips, and waving. She gave him a brief look, feeling her own brow furrow, and tugged Lucas a little bit closer to her hip. "This is Lucas."

The shorter one crouched down a bit to get closer to Lucas's level, and she couldn't help a wince. Chris had done that sort of thing, all the time, and Lucas had always brightened right up. Now, he turned his face slightly into her skirt, and she moved slightly in front of him, protectively. The man wrinkled his nose, but nodded and straightened back up, catching the taller man in the ribs with an elbow.

The tall man was still speaking to her father -- about Lucas, the same sort of sympathetic, empty questions that everyone who didn't know them had, if he was "okay", what had happened to him, why he wasn't a normal child, and her father answered the way he always did. Lucas had been through a lot. They all had.

Understatement of the year.

But the tall man turned around at the elbow, shooting a dark look at his partner, who ignored him, looked Andrea in the eye, and started moving his hands.

Her eyes widened slightly. Yeah, these guys definitely weren't like any Fish and Wildlife officials she'd ever seen.

"Do you know of a reasonably priced hotel?" The tall man asked, his voice flat, almost bored, his eyes glued to the other man's hands. Not partner, then. Interpreter. Andrea let out a soft breath and nodded.

"Lakefront Motel. Go around the corner, it's about two blocks."

The signing man flashed a short, confused grin, and his hands started moving again. She kept her eyes on them as much as the tall man did, and he suddenly froze in the middle of _Would you mind --_, dropped his chin, and caught her eye. She raised her eyebrows. His hands started moving again, and the tall man translated, though he was sounding confused, now, instead of bored.

"You can understand me?"

"I, uh." She grimaced slightly. "A little. We -- the doctors -- thought sign language might be a good . . . a good alternative. If Lucas. . . ." She couldn't finish, but it didn't matter, because the man was nodding, jerking his thumb towards his chest, extending his index and middle fingers on both hands and tapping them together, then drawing his right pinky to his lips. _My name is_ and then finger spelling _D-E-A-N_. The tall man kept silent for the moment, and she could feel his eyes on her face, but she kept her own glued on the signing man's -- on Dean's -- hands.

"Nice to meet you, Dean."

She was rewarded with a broad, bright smile. A ladykiller sort of grin.

And she wanted to kick herself when she gave him something approaching a real smile in return.

* * *

_"Aunt Carrie! Can I go over to Jeremy's house?"_

_Carrie's head snapped up from her paper-grading, and she stared at her nine year old son. "What did you say?"_

_Sam met her gaze firmly. "I asked if I could go to Jeremy's house."_

_"But you -- you called me --"_

_"Aunt Carrie."_

_That was Dean's name for her. Sam had always called her "Mom". She swallowed a wince and plastered a smile on her face and nodded. "Just so long as you're back by dinner."_

_Sam smiled brightly back and ran up to hug her. "Thanks, Aunt Carrie! You're the best." And he was out the door, leaving her alone. Dan was in class and Dean was staying after-school for baseball. Neither of them would be home any time soon._

_That was good. She didn't want either of them to catch her crying._

* * *

The men -- Sam and Dean, she knew now -- showed up on the playground later that day, while Lucas was scribbling away with his crayons at a bench maybe ten feet away, and she couldn't stop herself from tensing. "Can we join you?" Sam asked, and she had to stuggle to keep her tone civil.

"I'm here with my son."

Dean looked out over the playground towards Lucas and nodded, then started signing. Sam started to translate, but cut himself off halfway through. Andrea decided that, if Lucas had to use sign language himself, she was going to make sure he got a better interpreter than Sam.

"Do you mind if -- Dean, how the hell are you going to talk to him?"

Dean shot him a hard glare, his signs becoming slightly jerky with the force he was putting behind them. Apparently this wasn't directed to Andrea, since Sam didn't bother to translate, just stepped in and lowered his voice, blocking her sight line of Dean's hands with his body.

Yeah, no way in hell was she letting them near Lucas like this.

"Hey."

Sam stepped back a little guiltily, folding his hands behind his back and looking at the ground for a moment before looking back up at her. "He wants to know if Lucas can, uh. Read."

Andrea sighed. "He's learned. But he doesn't pay any attention. The doctors said it was some kind of post-traumatic stress." Sam's head jerked slightly in Dean's direction, but Dean's expression remained calm. He nodded to her, then angled his body to the side, gestured back towards Lucas, and raised his eyebrows questioningly. She closed her eyes and nodded. "Just stay where I can see you. Both of you." He nodded again and set off, smacking Sam in the chest with one arm when he tried to follow. Sam grimaced, muttered "Jerk" under his breath, then turned back to Andrea.

"You're a crappy interpreter, you know that?" Andrea said, before she could stop herself. Sam laughed softly and nodded.

"Yeah. I'm . . . not really used to doing it like this."

"New on the job?"

"You could say that. It's, uh. My first gig." He shrugged, and flashed her a small smile, and she felt herself warm to him a little. He reached up to rub the back of his neck. "It's not Dean, though. I've been . . . interpreting . . . for him all my life. He's my brother."

That right there, she decided, explained a whole lot. "But you're new to Fish and Wildlife."

"Brand new. Just, uh. Out of training."

"And you ended up on the missing persons/lake monster case. Wow, some guys get all the luck."

Sam laughed. "Well. Dean's been doing this a lot longer."

She nodded and turned her eyes towards the man in question, who was crouched down across from her son and scribbling away on his own piece of paper. "You really think -- you think he might get through to Lucas?"

Sam shrugged. "Don't know. I've never really seen him try talking to kids, before."

"No offense, but. I'm kind of hoping he doesn't." She caught the whip of Sam's head to the side in the corner of her vision, felt his eyes fix on her face even as she kept her own fixed on Lucas. "PTSD, right? I don't -- I don't want Lucas to think it's okay. Not to talk. I want my little boy back."

She heard a soft rush of air from Sam's direction, and for a long moment, that was the only sound between them.

"That's not it. Not Dean's deal."

"You flinched. When I mentioned it."

"It's a long story."

She sighed. She didn't need to know the story of these men's lives. They were here about the lake, and after what had happened to Chris, she had no intention of letting herself or Lucas anywhere near that lake again, not until it was dry as a bone. Lucas was just some . . . charity detour on their route.

Dean was headed back towards them, his head bent down, his hands in his pockets. He looked . . . dejected.

"Got tired of being ignored, huh?" She said softly. He looked up, gave her a fraction of the beaming smile she'd seen in her dad's office, and shrugged.

"Don't worry," Sam translated. "Kid's are strong. You'd be surprised what they can deal with."

She swallowed. "You know, he used to have such life. He was hard to keep up with, to tell you the truth. Now he just sits there. Drawing those pictures, playing with those army men. I just wish. . . ." _I wish I had my little boy back._

Then Lucas was there, a picture clenched in his hands, and he was looking up at Dean the way he hadn't looked at anyone since that day on the lake, and Andrea felt a thrill of combined elation and terror. Lucas was responding. But she hoped to hell he wasn't learning to be just like Dean.

* * *

_Carrie was half-asleep on the couch, the phone still clenched in her hand, when Dean came through the door. Staggered through it, to be more accurate. She sat up sharply and couldn't control her first reaction upon seeing him._

_"Where the hell have you been?"_

_He met her gaze with a blank one of his own, an expression she hadn't seen on his face since he was ten years old and finally pulled as far out of the shell his parents' death had trapped him in as he was going to get. His shoulders were hunched, his shirt bulging slightly near the right side of his neck, and he was holding his left arm very close to his chest. He looked exhausted. She pushed herself up off the couch and let her second reaction take over, rushing forward to gather him into her arms. "Baby. Are you okay?"_

_He let out an abbreviated howl when her hands touched his back -- she could feel something under his shirt, something that felt like _bandages_ -- and she pulled back. "You're not. Oh Dean, baby, what did you get yourself into?"_

_He shook his head, his right hand coming up and fluttering meaninglessly for a few moments before dropping. He was dead on his feet, but she forced herself to be firm. "Don't think we're not going to talk about this, young man. We've kept your last name, we've let you call us 'aunt' and 'uncle', but we still raised you. You still need to tell us where you're going. You still can't just -- just _leave_ like that, for two months!"_

_His hand came up again, employing the shorthand version of ASL that let him keep his left arm immobile against his chest. _Had some things to do.

_"What things, Dean? What's more important than -- than us? Than your brother? Than _school?_"_

_The blank look was back, covering over the exhaustion, and his hand flickered. _Don't need school.

_"Like hell --"_

Don't need school. Already know what I'm going to do.

_"I don't care if you want to be a mechanic, Dean. I don't care if you've decided you want to panhandle on the streets, you live in this house, and you're getting your diploma."_

_He nodded, looked down, then met her eyes again. _I'm tired. Can I go to bed?

_"We're talking about this in the morning."_

_He nodded again and trudged towards the stairs._

_They didn't talk about it in the morning. Dan said the same things she did. Sam said the same things she did. All three of them begged and demanded and coaxed, but Dean refused to talk about where he'd been and what he'd been doing, how he'd gotten the scratches from his shoulder to his hip and the broken arm._

_Three months later, he handed her a certificate stating that he'd earned his GED with flying colors, and she didn't care that he and Sam and Dan were all home. She still found a place alone to cry._

* * *

Andrea crouched on the end of the dock, unable to stop shuddering, unable to stop clutching at her son. Lucas was still in her arms, soaking wet, but he was breathing. He was breathing, and he was there, and she'd nearly lost him for real. Like she'd just lost her dad. Her dad who was a murderer, being chased by a ghost. . . .

But Lucas was there and he was solid and he was _breathing_ and she decided she didn't care. She didn't care if he never spoke another word, just so long as he stayed there, stayed with _her_. He could grow up like Dean. He could be just like Dean, sign language, leather jacket, and all, if he only just stayed with her.

She turned her head, pressing her cheek to the top of Lucas's head, and looked to where Dean was crouched over Sam, making soft, animal noises and signing furiously with shaking hands. Sam wasn't translating -- he was too busy coughing water onto the dock, but she understood well enough.

_First time out. First time out and you nearly DROWN._

She couldn't help it, she started laughing. Dean's head whipped up with another of those hurt grunts, and he stared at her and she shook her head.

"He said he was new to the job. I thought -- I thought he meant Fish and Wildlife."

Dean relaxed slightly and shook his head.

"I can't believe this is what you do. You save people. Like Lucas." _But not like my dad._

Dean nodded, and Sam groaned.

"Yeah," he said, once he'd cleared all the water from his lungs. "Yeah, I couldn't really believe it at first, either."

And then Lucas was squirming in her grip and she turned her head back to him. "Lucas, no, it's okay, we're okay, Lucas, just don't --" He struggled harder, loosening her grip, one of his hands reaching for Dean. Dean grabbed it, held on firmly, nodding hurriedly, his meaning clear even without signs.

_Listen to your mom. It's okay._

Lucas was shaking hard, gasping for breath. "Thank you," he said.

They all stared.

It'd been quiet. So very, very quiet, but it had been out loud. He'd _spoken_.

He couldn't get any other words out; Andrea was gripping him too hard. Her little boy had come back to her.

* * *

_Sam graduated at the top of his class, had a full ride to Stanford to look forward to, awards in every subject, and four soccer trophies to his name, when he turned 18. Dean had started working full time at Mike's garage once he'd brought home his GED, got a job working at a local classic car specialty shop not long after his 18th birthday, and started traveling around, spending less and less time at home._

_The day after Sam's graduation ceremony, Dean approached Carrie and Dan at the breakfast table and set a letter down between them. It said that his request to be transferred to the Palo Alto branch of the company that owned his classic car shop had been approved. Carrie took one look at it, then turned her gaze to Dean._

_She said as much to him, these days, as he was willing to say back: not much at all. She could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't asking them. He was telling._

_He was 22 years old. She and her husband had been his legal guardians for twelve of those years. But she knew now that, unlike his brother, Dean had never been _hers_._

_The day they left, she pulled him into her arms, refusing to let him brush her off. She pulled his head down to her shoulder and kissed his cheek._

_"I hope you find what you're looking for, Dean. I really do. You'll always have a place, here."_

_He nodded against her, and when he pulled back, she let him. His hands came up. _Mom loved you.

_She thought of the four year old boy whom she'd rocked to sleep every night after the fire. She thought of the ten year old boy who seemed to relearn to smile again just for her and Dan and Sam. She thought of the seventeen year old boy who'd looked at her with such blank eyes, but even though he didn't think he had time for it, got his diploma in his own way, just for her. And she decided that those words were his way of telling her that he loved her, too._

* * *

"So, Lucas. What do you think Sam and Dean want for lunch?"

Lucas looked up at her from where he was poised at her hip next to the refrigerator. "Sandwiches."

"Sandwiches." She nodded, tearing up all over again just at the sound of his voice. "Sandwiches are good."

"Can I make them?"

"Yeah." She crouched down to his level, pulling him firmly into her arms, reveling in the feel of his hands clutching her back. "Yeah, I think that's a great idea."


	4. Reverence

**Warnings:** AU, some language, rewrite of canon  
**Spoilers:** "Faith"  
**Author's note:** This was one of the more difficult parts of this series to write. It should be noted that this was written prior to the airing of "In the Beginning". I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

**Reverence**

"Well, alright, baby." Carrie said, the phone pinched between her shoulder and her head as she made a few final notes on the paper she was grading. "Just know that Dan and I are thinking of you, you hear? Both of you. Don't let Dean drag you to too many car shows." She paused, then laughed lightly, dropping her pen and bringing her hand up to the receiver. "You, too. Goodbye, Sam."

Dan closed the lid of the laptop he was working on and folded his arms across it, leaning forward towards his wife. "They doing alright?"

"They're fine." She offered him a small smile, though he could see the hints of concern in the lines beside her eyes. "In Nebraska, this time. They're getting closer, Dan."

"They'll come home when they're ready." Dan reached up and scratched under his ear, tilting his head and staring across the room at the window. "Where in Nebraska?"

"Didn't say." Carrie's smile dropped and she looked down at the paper she'd been working on. "It's been nearly six months since the fire. He should be back in school, by now."

Dan nodded and lifted his shoulder in a shrug. "Everyone deals with grief in their own time, Carrie. You know that."

"I don't like it."

"You haven't liked much that Dean's done since he was seventeen. Why should Sam be any different?"

Carrie's hand slammed into the table hard enough to make both of them jump. Dan finally pulled his gaze away from the window and focused it on his wife, who was staring down at her hand like it belonged to someone else. She raised her eyes to meet his, her mouth set in a hard line. Then she stood without saying a word, gathered up her papers and her pens, and left their shared office.

For all that she'd taught Dean and Sam over the years, Dan reflected, Dean had taught her just as much.

Like how to throw a guilt trip at a person without ever saying a single word.

He sighed and leaned back, opening the laptop and firing up a search engine. It took a while, but he finally found an obituary for a young man about Dean's age who'd unexpectedly died in a swimming facility in Nebraska when his lungs collapsed. The same paper had an "unrelated" article on another man, much older and in a town not far away, who claimed to have had his emphysema cured by a faith healer. He pursed his lips and looked over the interview, reaching up to rub at his jaw.

* * *

Layla first saw them outside the tent before what she'd promised herself would be her last service with Roy Le Grange, no matter what her mother had to say. After so many weeks and witnessing so many miracles, she was exhausted. She could only let herself be disappointed at being passed over so many times before she had to admit to herself that maybe being healed wasn't God's plan for her. Today, she told herself, she would be healed or she would accept her fate. Either way, she wasn't coming back.

She was really, really hoping for the first option. Especially if being healed would let her spend more time enjoying the good things in life, like the company of men who looked like the two who were bickering in the parking lot next to the shining black behemoth of a sedan.

To be absolutely fair, it was the taller of the two, the young man with the long, bedraggled brown hair and casually hunched shoulders who was making all the noise. The other, leaning against the side of the car with his hands stuck deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, didn't say a word. Layla wondered if that was the reason they were here. Laryngitis was rarely life threatening, as far as she knew, but perhaps he had some sort of throat cancer, or a lung disorder like the man from the week before. He didn't look sick -- his skin was pale, but a healthy sort of pale that spoke of spending most of one's time out of the sun rather than of blood loss or exhaustion, like so many of the others.

Then again, Layla knew she didn't look sick, either. And there really wasn't much reason to come to Roy Le Grange's services than in search of a miracle.

That was what the tumor had done to her. Everywhere she looked, now, she saw the fragility of life, and everyone she saw got their own special, imaginary diagnosis. She wanted to think that the services with Reverend Le Grange had shown her the hope in that fragility.

Maybe, if today _was_ the day, she'd come back after all. Just to keep seeing that hope.

She broke away from her mother and made her way closer to the two men.

". . . I'm just saying Dean. Maybe this isn't what you're thinking. Maybe this guy's the real deal. Maybe he can. . . ." The taller one trailed off as the shorter -- Dean, apparently -- stared back at him, his eyes hard. ". . . Maybe he can help you," the taller one finished finally, quietly, not looking at Dean. Layla had seen scenes like these before, played over and over, one person filled with faith and the other not daring to believe. She'd never seen the look of anger and betrayal that she saw cross Dean's face, though, barely hiding under a mask of confusion, as though Dean understood exactly what the other man meant, but wanted to pretend he could be wrong. She felt the need, suddenly, to break into this one-sided conversation and wipe that look from Dean's face.

"You never know until you try," she said, stepping up next to the taller one and giving Dean a bright, confrontational smile. Dean looked at her, his brows drawing together, then turned his head, pushed off the car, and started off. Layla supposed she ought to have expected that. From the way the tall man's shoulders hunched even further, she decided he had. She let out a slight sigh and ran a hand carefully through her hair. "Sorry about that. I . . . tend to try to help. Even when maybe I shouldn't."

The man shook his head, staring off after Dean. "No, that's okay. He's just -- he's really stubborn." He finally looked at her, the edges of his mouth straining up in what would probably be a rather nice smile, if he weren't distracted by thoughts that weren't smile-worthy. "I'm Sam. That's my brother, Dean."

"It's nice to meet you, Sam. I'm Layla. Do you. . . ." She hesitated, not sure if this was anywhere near her place, but wanting to try and offer Sam _something_ in light of how much she'd managed to not help with his brother. "Do you mind if I ask. . . ?"

Sam shook his head. "No, it's okay. Everyone wonders. He's mute."

Layla nodded. "The reverend usually deals with illnesses, or accidents. But I'm sure he could help with something, uh." What was the word? "Congenital."

Another head shake, with a faint laugh. "Brain damage. When he was young."

"Oh." Layla forced her tone to be bright. "Well, that's right up the reverend's alley, then. You're in luck."

"Only if Dean gets his head out of his ass," Sam said darkly, shoulders rising once and then lowering back to their slumped position. "Sorry. It's . . . we've had kind of a rough time, recently."

"It's okay. Maybe. Maybe he's just scared."

Sam snorted. "I doubt that."

Layla laughed. "You never know. It's hard, getting up the kind of hope you need to really have faith in someone like Reverend Le Grange. Even when you've seen the miracles, yourself." She looked off towards where Dean had positioned himself, leaning now against the railing that lined the steps up to the reverend's house, watching the people shuffle and file their way to the tent. "It might help if I talked to him. I should at least apologize for butting in, like that."

Sam's mouth quirked up again in that not-quite-smile. "You're free to try. But I doubt it'll get you anywhere."

"Well. I'll stick to what I said before. You never know until you try. It was nice to meet you, Sam."

"Uh. Yeah. You, too." He tilted his head, shoulders moving back, lifting his whole being in a way that really showed off his height. "Do you know sign language?"

Layla pursed her lips and frowned. "Oh. No, I don't. That's -- that's going to make it a little harder, isn't it."

"He's got a notebook. But, yeah. It might. I could translate, if you like."

She shook her head. "No. . . ." What she hoped to say was probably best only between two people. "No, that's alright. I'm sure I'll manage."

He nodded. "Okay. I'll . . . I'll be here, I guess. If you need me."

"Thank you," Layla said simply. She considered patting his arm, the way her mother did with her when she wanted to reassure her of something, but decided against it. She was already butting into Sam and Dean's lives enough as it was. Her father, when he'd still been around, used to say that she'd make the perfect missionary, the way she always had to get involved with people. She'd never had the guts to leave home, though. Maybe, she thought, her mission was to stay right here. Maybe it was to help Sam's brother believe.

* * *

There were things about Mary Winchester that everyone believed to be true. That Carrie was her best friend. That she'd loved her husband and her sons. That she'd died trying to save them from the fire that took her home.

As far as Dan knew, these things were true. He also knew that they weren't the only things that were.

Carrie was Mary's best friend, certainly. They'd met in college, the University of Kansas, in fact, and had been close friends ever since. Officially, Dan and Mary had met through that friendship, after he'd started dating Carrie while they were both doing their graduate work in Lawrence. Most people, including Carrie and John, had believed that Mary's choice of Carrie and Dan for Dean's godparents had been based on that friendship.

It had. It simply hadn't been the only reason for it.

Dan and Mary had actually met a few years before Dan had ever even started dating Carrie, before he'd ever come to Lawrence or the University of Kansas. They'd met in an abandoned frontier town, in fact, one he'd never known the name of and didn't care to ever think too hard about again. Mary had picked them because she loved Carrie. But she'd also picked them because she knew from experience that Dan would be able to help protect Dean.

Mary had absolutely loved her husband and her sons. Dan had never had any doubt about that. It was clear in her face every time she looked at them. But Dan knew she'd also been terrified by them. For them. They'd hoped with all their hearts, when the two of them had finally managed to walk out of that frontier town all those years ago, that everything was over and that their lives could return to normal. But they'd both feared that "normal" could never really happen again. That the yellow eyed man would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Mary hadn't wanted a family, after that. She'd fallen in love with John by accident. Had let him talk her into a family and a home and a life, let him make her believe that she could have all three of those things and live happily ever after. She'd worked so hard and kept so quiet to try and make that true.

Mary had died for her family in that fire. Dan knew that as well as he knew anything else. He didn't know if the fire had had anything to do with the horrible dreams and visions he'd suffered in his early adulthood, or with Mary's eerie ability to convince anyone she met to do anything she pleased. He didn't know if the yellow eyed man had somehow made it back from the exorcism they'd worked out in that frontier town, if he was the reason Dean had been so hurt getting out of that house. He knew that, when Mary had met up with Dean and Sam on the front lawn that night, she'd looked terrified. He knew that she'd caught his eye when she ushered the boys over to him and Carrie on the street, whispering to Dean as she went. He knew that her words had kept him standing still when she'd turned back to go back into the house after John, when all he'd wanted to do was rush after her and pull her back. He knew that the only reason why he and Carrie had been on the street that night was because of his nightmares, showing him the flames bursting out the windows and the terror in his godson's eyes as he clutched his baby brother to his chest and watched his house burn.

And he knew, thirteen years later when his godson had returned home, bandaged and broken, but burning internally with a new fire and determination, that Dean had learned the truth about the world, if not the truth about his mother.

And he knew, above all else, that Mary had wanted to keep these things from Carrie. That she'd wanted to shelter her best friend from the darkness she'd experienced.

So Dan never told his wife what he knew. He tracked the boys' progress on their road trip, keeping track of the deaths that seemed to lead them around, but he made sure that Carrie never found out the real reasons for their destinations. And he waited for the nightmares to return, hoping all the while that they'd show him how to keep the boys safe from the fiery fate of the rest of their family.

* * *

Dean looked up at her as she approached, his features drawn down into a faint scowl, then looked away, towards the tent. She kept her own expression light and distant, stopping a few feet away from him and following his gaze. "Hey."

He let out an audible breath through his nose that she supposed could count as a greeting.

"I'm Layla."

He looked up at her, then over her shoulder towards where she knew his brother was standing, then back to her.

"You're Dean, I know. I wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have stepped in, like that."

He shrugged, looking back towards the tent like he didn't care, but she saw his scowl ease off.

"Your brother -- Sam -- he only wants to help, you know."

The scowl returned and he shifted against the railing.

"You don't want help, though, do you."

He shook his head, a blank, detached expression falling over his features.

Layla took a step closer and turned her body outward, standing next to him and mimicking his pose, slightly. "That's good, you know. Means less competition for me." She turned her head towards him and grinned to show she was joking, and she saw his mouth twitch slightly as he looked back. His eyebrow rose and he looked her over. "You're allowed to ask. I don't mind." He snorted, pursing his lips, and looked away. "That's alright," she said. "Let's me keep my mystery."

Another snort, this one more amused, and that lip twitch reappeared. He turned his head again after a moment and just looked at her, and she held his gaze and smiled back. Finally, he pulled his hands out of his pockets, revealing a small notebook and a pencil. He flipped it open to a blank page in a practiced motion and quickly wrote something down before holding the notebook up so she could see it.

_Ur here 2 B healed?_

"You're not?"

The scowl reappeared again for a moment. _Nothing wrong w/ me. Sam's an idiot_

She laughed. "Or maybe he's just an optimist."

_Same thing_ He paused, pencil hovering over the page, then wrote again. _I'll bite. What's wrong w/ U?_

She took a breath. It never got easier to say out loud. "I have -- I have this thing. A tumor." He was looking at her fully, now, his attention no longer divided between her, his brother, and the tent. "It's inoperable. Reverend Le Grange is -- he's my last hope."

He closed his eyes and shook the pencil up and down for a moment, his hesitation to write what he wrote next clear in every line of his body. _He's not_

She couldn't keep the harsh tone out of her voice. "You know some other miracle brain tumor cure?"

Another hesitation, then: _No. Le Grange. He's not hope_

"I've met a lot of formerly dying people over the last several weeks who'd disagree with you."

_Don't go in the tent_

She took a step back. It was her turn, now, to pull her attention away from him and take on the standoffish attitude he'd had only a few minutes before. "Why not?"

_I can't tell explain_

"You can't tell me not to go in there without telling me why."

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. _People R dying_

"I know. That's why they're here. Just because you don't think he can help you --"

His hand shot up, cutting her off, and he brought his pen back to the phrase he'd just written, underlining and adding to it. _Other__ People R dying. When Le Grange heals._

Layla sucked in a breath, not wanting to believe what Dean was trying to tell her. "That's not true."

He dug into his back pocket with the hand holding the pencil and handed her a folded piece of newspaper. She took it out and looked it over. It was an obituary, for someone named Marshall Hall. "This -- it doesn't prove anything."

He held up the notebook again, pointing to the words on the page.

"That's not _true._" She crumpled the obituary in her hand. "You're just another one of the people who wants to bring down everything that the reverend is doing here. Roy Le Grange is a _good man_. He was blessed by the Lord, so he can share that blessing with other people." She took another step back, and found that she wanted to keep going. Her mother was waiting. Today was going to be the day. She knew it. She couldn't let this -- this barrier to her faith stop her. This was a test. She was going to pass it. "He's our _only hope._" She shook her head. "Don't tell anyone else that. Don't take this from us. Just -- go home, Dean. If you don't want the reverend's blessing, then just go home."

She turned then, walking quickly and blinking sharply against the dreary gray light of the day. What Dean had said wasn't true. He was just another nonbeliever. Just another obstacle -- a test of her faith.

Her mother held out a hand for her when she approached. "What did that boy say to you?"

She shook her head, wiping at her eyes. "Nothing. I thought he was -- but he's just -- nothing."

Her mother patted her arm. "Are you ready?"

She nodded, forcing herself to smile for her mom. "Yeah. Today's the day. I can feel it."

Her mother smiled back and they stepped into the tent. "That's right. Today's your day."

* * *

Dan hadn't dreamed of Jessica's death, so he let himself believe that it had nothing to do with Mary or himself or the fire that had happened 22 years before. He and Carrie hadn't gotten to meet Jessica, though they'd known how deeply Sam had cared for her in the way he spoke of her on the phone and in his emails. Carrie had known, though she hadn't told him until after they'd heard the news, that Sam had been planning to ask her to marry him. It was a tragedy, certainly, and a nigh-unholy coincidence that the fire had happened on the day it had happened.

But he hadn't dreamed, so he believed that that was all that it was.

He hadn't dreamed -- hadn't had one of _those_ dreams, at the very least -- since 1983, when he'd woken in the middle of the night to drag his wife out the door with no more explanation than a simple "we have to go". What Carrie thought of that, of the way he'd simply _known_ that something was wrong with the Winchesters, he didn't know. He was afraid to ask. If they hadn't immediately had their hands full with the two boys, he suspected all of his and Mary's secrets might have been forced out, that night.

Dan was a religious studies professor. He'd considered, before the frontier town and his encounter with an evil all too real, going into the seminary. Carrie knew he believed in things that couldn't be explained, though she herself was Catholic in name only, preferring the observable reality of the what she saw around her. For her, magic was only a literary device she taught to her students in her English classes.

There were those who thought that faith and belief in the unprovable were necessary things to a full life in this world. Before that frontier town, Dan had been one of them.

These days, he did everything he could to preserve his wife's apathy towards religion. He wanted to believe she was safer, that way.

* * *

Layla was back at the tent for the next service, this time without her mother on her arm. The reverend's miracle had been all it was cracked up to be -- she'd received a clean bill of health from her doctors, not even a shadow on the scans to show where the tumor had once been. The headaches were gone. The exhaustion was gone. But the fear -- the fear was still there.

Because she'd heard the reports. A young woman had died of an aneurysm while running through the woods, the same day that she'd been cured.

She didn't want to believe it. She wished she hadn't heard. She wished she had never approached Sam and Dean in the parking lot. Her faith, the love for her God which had supported her and carried her through her entire life, was shaking. And it _hurt._

She came back because she wanted answers. She came back because she wanted people to tell her that Dean had been wrong. That the woman running in the woods had been an unlucky accident. That Roy Le Grange was exactly who she'd believed him to be, a good man who loved God and wanted to share his blessing with the rest of the world.

But faith in the good brought faith in the bad. And she knew, deep down, that Dean had been right. She lived because someone else had died in her place.

Sam and Dean were there, huddled into each other in the parking lot and casting glances from the tent to the house and back again. She hurried over to them, hoping, though she wasn't entirely sure why, that no one would see her.

Dean noticed her first, lifting his head and gesturing quickly. Sam turned, eyes wide. "Layla."

"It's true, isn't it."

Sam bit his lip. Dean nodded.

"_Why?_"

The brothers exchanged a glance, Dean hurriedly signing away. Sam watched him, then gestured Layla closer, keeping his voice low. "We think it's Sue Ann."

"The reverend's wife?" Layla shook her head. It didn't make sense.

"She's -- do you believe in grim reapers?"

Layla opened her mouth, then closed in, shaking her head. "I -- I don't know."

Dean shot her a sympathetic look and Sam continued. "We think that's what's happening here. That Sue Ann has bound a reaper, somehow, and is using it to give the members of Le Grange's congregation other people's lives."

"But -- but _why?_"

Dean held up his notebook. _She thinks she's doing God's work_

Layla felt her jaw tense. "That --" She wanted to say it didn't make sense, but the trouble was exactly the opposite. She knew what faith felt like. She knew how easy it was for people to use it as excuse for what they did. But she also knew that the God she had faith in would never want something like this to happen. "What can we do?"

"_You_ don't do anything. It's probably safer if you leave. Now."

"No. I'm part of this. The reverend _healed_ me. Even if it wasn't a miracle, I can't let that happen for no reason."

Dean elbowed Sam to get his attention, his hands flying. Sam swallowed, then nodded. "Can you -- do you think maybe you could try to delay the service? Dean and I need to find the altar that Sue Ann's using."

Layla's heart was racing, but she nodded. "I . . . yeah. I can do that." She took a few steps away, towards the tent, trying to think of a stall tactic she could use. She paused, then turned back. "How do you guys know about all this?"

Sam frowned, shrugged, and looked at his feet. Dean huffed a silent snort, pencil moving swiftly over his notebook.

_It's what we do._

Layla shook her head. "Right. Ask a stupid question." She set out for the tent at a jog, thinking back to the last time she'd met up with the brothers, how she'd thought that her mission had been to make Dean believe.

It hadn't, she decided. It had been for her to let them make her believe. And if she could do this, if she could delay the reverend so that they could have a chance to stop his wife, then maybe that could be a reason why she'd been healed. It wasn't enough -- she didn't think anything ever could be enough to make up for the life that had been lost -- but it was a start. A first step.

And, though the fear wasn't gone, she felt the hope well up again.

* * *

Dan dreamed of Carrie on the ceiling. He had set up protections around the house when they'd first moved in -- as a religious studies professor, he hadn't even had to try that hard to come up with a reason for the arcane symbols hanging like art around the place -- but in all the research he'd done over the years since the frontier town, he'd never found anything concrete saying "this is how you keep the yellow eyed man out". So when he dreamed of blood and fire and his wife, he went looking for someone who might be able to help.

He went to Missouri.

She told him his symbols would help. She gave him other tools, as well, told him about salt and gris-gris and things that he'd never connected to his experiences, before.

She told him that she could sense his abilities, that once they had been powerful, but over time, they'd diminished. She gave him tea and a squeeze to his shoulder and she wished him luck.

He hid a ladder in the closet and a fire extinguisher under the bed, just in case luck and salt and gris-gris weren't enough. He considered calling Sam and Dean. He considered telling Carrie the truth. He considered packing her into the car and taking them both as far away from Lawrence and its history of housefires and tragedy as they could get.

In the end, he waited.

It was all he could do.

* * *

Layla met up with Sam and Dean again at their car. "I couldn't stop them. But it didn't work. The healing didn't work."

The brothers looked exhausted, run into the ground. "It's over," Sam said, resting his hands on the roof of the car. "The reaper's unbound. Everything's back to how it should be."

Layla reached up instinctively, her hand hovering at the side of her head, trembling. Sam's eyes went wide and he shook his head. "It's not reversed. You're still -- you're still healed. But the rest of it -- it won't happen again."

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and wrapped her arms over her chest. "Sue Ann?" The brothers exchanged a look and she swallowed. "You didn't. Kill her, did --"

"The reaper." Sam said simply. "I think it turned on her."

Layla's hand came up again, this time to her mouth as her stomach jolted. This was all too much. She wished it had never happened. She wished she'd never met the men standing across from her. Dean met her eyes, an apology as clear on his face as it would have been written down in his notebook. Sam swallowed.

"I'm sorry, Layla. I know you believed --" He was cut off by his phone ringing. He tugged it from his pocket, frowned at the caller ID, then took a few steps away, looking between Dean and Layla. "I'm going to -- I'll be right back." He hurried several feet away, flipping the phone open. Dean watched him go, then turned back to Layla.

She offered him a slight smile, though it hurt to do so. "I still believe." Dean lifted an eyebrow and she continued. "Maybe it doesn't make sense, to you. But -- I still think that everything has its purpose. I still think that God's looking out for us, or will, if we let Him. I guess -- I guess if you're going to have faith when the miracles happen, you have to have faith when the bad things do, too."

Dean nodded slowly, pulling out his notebook. He made the letters large, going over each of them several times with his pencil to make them nice and visible with the car between them.

_You're a good person, Layla._

She felt her cheeks tighten and a slight burn in her eyes, but forced herself to smile at him. "You're learning grammar." He smirked, his shoulders shaking slightly, and pointed to the words again with his pencil.

"Thank you. That means a lot to me. Even if you don't believe."

He tilted his head and lifted one shoulder, and though he didn't write anything, she chose to think that he was saying "maybe I'm starting to".

Sam came back, slipping his phone back in his pocket, his face pale. "Dean." Dean turned, and Layla started to back away. She couldn't help but hear Sam's words as she left.

"That was the Lawrence P.D. There's been an accident."

She heard something slam into the metal of their car and forced herself not to turn around. She knew she couldn't help with whatever Sam had just found out. She knew that she would probably never see the two brothers again. She didn't look back until she heard their engine starting up and the car rumbling over the uneven ground that served as the parking lot.

As she watched the black car roll off into the distance, she wrapped her arms over her chest. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people, and you couldn't stop it.

"I wish you guys luck," she whispered. "I really do." She pressed her fingers to her lips, then held them in the air. "I'll pray for you."

That was all she could do.


	5. Home is Where

**Warnings:** AU, some language, original character death  
**Spoilers:** general for season one  
**Author's note:** And here's the part where I half expected to get lynched. . . . Hope you all enjoy!

* * *

**Home is Where**

Missouri met Sam Winchester in the lobby of Lawrence Memorial Hospital two days after the accident. She knew who he was the moment she saw him, and instead of heading for the front desk to inquire after Carrie Masters, she headed over and paused a few feet from the brightly upholstered chair he was slouched in.

"Sam Winchester?"

When he looked up, Missouri had to take a step back, the wave of his grief, worry, and fear was so strong. She unfolded her hands from across her stomach and held one out to him, palm upwards. "Missouri Mosely. I was a friend of your uncle's."

Sam nodded, his eyes hooded, and took her hand for a shake. Missouri steeled herself for the increase in negative emotions, but couldn't help but furrow her brow at the extra bits that came along with them. "Oh sweetie. You have been having a tough time of it lately, haven't you. I'm sorry about your girlfriend."

To his brother, she suspected, that would be the wrong thing to say. Probably would have gotten a punch in the mouth for it. But Sam merely tensed and pulled his hand away. "How did you know that?"

"I'm a psychic, Sam. And you were thinking about it, just now. Do you mind if I sit with you for a few?"

His expression closed down, but she could feel a slight increase in his fear. He nodded to the chair next to him just the same and she sat down, careful not to brush up against him and chance catching too much more of what he didn't want to show.

"You know --" His voice caught, but he continued on without correcting himself. "-- Uncle Dan?"

"I did," she said, with a brief incline of her head. "Not well, mind you. Met him about a week ago, when he came to request my services. I did what I could for him, but when I heard about the accident, I knew you and your brother would be coming back here. And I knew that we'd have to have ourselves a little chat."

Sam turned his head forward again, mouth set in a firm line. "This is where you ask for our credit card number, right?"

She couldn't help herself -- she smacked him in the arm. "Boy, I look like some two-bit charlatan to you? You come to me, wanting to know if your wife is getting busy with the gardener, then I'd be tellin' you my policy on personal checks. But this is serious. I didn't charge your uncle, and I ain't gonna charge you."

His mouth twitched a few times, and he twisted her head in her direction and back forward, hand coming up to scratch his ear before he answered. "Fine. What do you need to tell me?"

"That can wait until your brother joins us. First, though, I'd like to ask you something."

"What?"

"Why haven't you told Dean about your dreams?"

Sam's hands clenched on the arms of his chair. "How did you --"

"I already told you that, I'm psychic. It's weighing heavy on your mind, Sam. It might help to share it."

"Dean wouldn't believe me."

"Dean's believed a lot more than you've given him credit for, for a lot longer than you'd've thought."

"This is different."

"It's because you're scared."

Sam didn't answer.

"It's understandable, son. I ain't always been this open about my gifts, either. But yours are so powerful. You and your brother could do a lot of good if you learned how to harness them."

"They aren't -- Dean won't --"

"You think he won't trust you, any more."

"I don't know."

"Boy, don't you know your brother better than that?"

"No." Sam turned to look her in the eye, finally. "No, I don't. He's keeping secrets from me, too, you know. He has for _years_. I don't know what to think about him any more."

"I won't defend him to you, Sam. Don't know him myself save from what I learned from you and your uncle. But I know this: Dan trusted him. And you do, too, you always have. I can't say nothing about what secrets he is or isn't still keeping from you now, but what I see in your mind is that you know, deep down, that he'll do what he can to help you, no matter what." When Sam turned away again, jaw clenched, she sighed. "I know it hurts, Sam. I know you're grieving, and I think things are only gonna get tougher for you before they get easier. But Dean's feeling the same. He's just as hurt and confused. And you two need to be there for each other."

Sam shook his head. "Dan and Dean were never close."

"Dan was a quiet one, I'll give you that. Very reserved. But he loved both of you boys, and you both know that."

"But Aunt Carrie --"

"Carrie and Dean are a whole different story, Sam."

"They haven't gotten along since he was seventeen."

"I suspect -- and again, I only know either of them through you and Dan -- but I suspect that Carrie and Dean were just too similar. Both protective. Both caring almost too much. And both stubborner than mules."

"Dean resents her. For not being Mom."

"That may be true. But loving someone doesn't mean you have to get along. It doesn't even mean you have to much like a person." She took a breath as she felt a presence move past them, then continued, knowing more than ever that what she was about to say was true. "Carrie loved Dean."

"Loved --" Sam repeated, then pushed himself to his feet. "It shouldn't be taking this long. Dean should be back by now."

Missouri looked down to her lap.

"I'm gonna." He ended the sentence abruptly and started off for the front desk. Missouri saw Dean coming out of the elevator before Sam even got there, staring down at the floor, and she pressed her hands together.

"Dean?"

Dean shook his head, hands shoved in his pockets, and headed out the door without glancing back at Sam.

Sam's knees buckled and Missouri hurried over to take his hand again.

She couldn't take away the grief of losing his girlfriend, his uncle, and his aunt so quick after each other. But she could share that burden, even if his brother wasn't ready to.

* * *

The funeral was a joint one -- though Dan had been pronounced dead on the scene and Carrie had lingered, it wasn't hard to have them both ready to be interred on the same day -- and it was held on a sunny afternoon in early May. Sam and Dean took the place of honor, of course, and the crowd was large enough, filled with fellow professors and students from the university as well as friends and neighbors, that Missouri could barely see the two of them, standing side by side in cheap black suits at the graveside. But she made out enough to see the way Sam leaned slightly against Dean, the way Dean's shoulders were held so terribly straight, and the way that his eyes, unlike Sam's, never drifted down to the caskets in front of them.

People grieved in different ways. Missouri knew that as well as anyone. But she saw more than grief in the set of those shoulders.

She wasn't able to meet up with them again until afterwards, when most of the rest of the mourners had started off in twos and threes. The university was hosting the wake, and the boys were clearly in no rush to leave. She hated to intrude upon them, but it was necessary. They had to know what little Dan had known.

She suspected that the fate of more than just their family rested on it.

"Sam. Dean. I am so sorry."

"Missouri," Sam said. His shoulders pulled up, mimicking his brother's stance. Dean shot him a glance, his hands raised and moving questioningly.

"We met at the hospital," Missouri explained. "You hurried off before I could talk to you."

"Missouri's the psychic," Sam said, his shoulder brushing against Dean's. Dean pursed his lips, hands moving again, and Sam watched them intently, looking like he wasn't sure if he should be translating or not.

"Now there ain't no need for that sort of language, Dean Winchester."

Dean's eyes widened.

"Don't need to know any sign language to understand you, boy, you're broadcasting louder than ABC. You'd think with what you know one psychic lady wouldn't be that hard to buy."

Dean's mouth set in a line and Sam let out a weary breath. "You said you had something you needed to tell both of us?"

"I do. And I understand that this isn't the best of times, but I know you two are hoping to rush out of here all over again and I wanted to make sure I had the chance. It's about your uncle."

Dean's gesture was easy to read even without her abilities. _Well?_

"There ain't no good way to say this, so I'll just come right out. Dan was a psychic. He knew he and your aunt were in danger."

Both boys took a step backwards and Sam immediately spoke for the both of them. "He what? How do you -- is that why he came to you?"

"It is. You ever wonder how it was he and Carrie were at your house all those years ago, when the fire happened? Or why it was he kept all those arcane symbols hanging around?"

"Carrie and Mom were friends. And Dan was theologian."

"Don't suppose you know much about demons, do you, boys. Those signs were for warding them off. Now, I don't know the whole story, but I got the feeling from our talk that Dan had had encounters with evil before. He was determined to keep you boys and Carrie safe."

Dean swallowed. _Why are you telling us this?_

"Because that demon might just be what came to your family, twenty-two years ago. I ain't got any proof, just a strong feeling, but I've learned to trust those. I think Dan feared it was going to come back for him, and use Carrie to do it." She looked Sam in the eye. "He had dreams of her on the ceiling." Sam sucked in a breath and his eyes flicked to Dean, but Dean was too busy staring at Missouri to notice. "He came to me to learn how to increase his protection and keep the demon away. And I think maybe those protections on the house worked."

"But the accident --"

"You know, there's those who don't like calling car crashes 'accidents'. Say it implies that no one's at fault."

"You think the demon --"

"Can't say for sure, can I? I haven't been able to get close to the car to get a reading, but there's a lingering presence on the corner where it happened. If the demon didn't cause the collision, it surely stopped by to make sure that it was fatal."

Sam grabbed hold to Dean's arm, though Missouri wasn't sure if it was to steady himself or Dean, or to keep either of them from running off right to find the thing that hurt their family right then. "What else do you know about it? The demon?"

Missouri shook her head. "I'm sorry, I've told you everything I know. I'm not a magician -- my gifts are limited. But I think you boys may want to check your uncle's things, see if you can find anything more." She held out her hand hesitantly, then when they didn't pull away, pressed it to the place where their two shoulders met. The weight of their shock and grief nearly made her sway. "But first, you boys have friends waiting for you, over at the wake. You let them help you now, you hear? They might not know all that we do about what goes on in the world, but that doesn't mean they can't support you in your time of grief, here." She pulled her hand away and nodded. "You call me if you need anything. Anything at all."

Dean looked down and away, brows furrowed, but Sam nodded, moisture collecting in the corners of his eyes. "We will. Thank you."

"Don't be thanking me just yet, Sam. You got a long, hard road ahead of you. You boys are meant to do more for this world than anyone will ever fully understand, and there are those who'd like to stop you from doing it. Be careful."

Dean nodded and turned abruptly to walk away. Sam frowned and opened his mouth to shout at him, then just offered Missouri a shrug and hurried to follow. Missouri stood where she was and watched them go before turning back to the graves.

"Dan, I know you and your wife did your best, but you really ought to have taught that boy some better manners." She sighed and turned to head back to her own car, planning to head home and fix herself a large cup of coffee.

She had a little bit more to do for those Winchester boys, just yet.

* * *

The cemetery was dark and nearly empty when she arrived later that night. The only signs that it wasn't completely deserted were the pile of dirt along side the fresh graves of Carrie and Dan Masters and the heavy weight of anger thickening the air.

Dean didn't see her approach, his eyes focused first on the graves in front of him, then up into the air. Missouri held back, watching the black silohuette of his shoulders heave as he cast his shovel to one side and reached into a duffel bag for a large canister of salt. He held it out at arms length over the graves and turned in a slow circle. She stepped into the shadow of a mausoleum to keep from startling him and settled in to wait.

It didn't take long. She watched him heave in a focused breath, and then he opened his mouth.

"Come on, you bastard."

It was quiet, barely more than a whisper, but it carried over the open ground. He swallowed thickly and she could feel the tension in the air as he had to concentrate on forming the words.

"Come out and talk to me."

He turned in a circle again, then thrust the salt out over the graves one more time, sprinkling a small amount into the open air. "_COME ON!_"

Her throat ached in sympathy for how the sound seemed to rip its way out of him, choking at the end on unshed tears and unspoken words. When his frame started to fold in on itself, she decided it was time to make her presence known.

"They don't always come back, Dean."

He spun, and she saw for the first time that he was armed with more than just the salt canister. He pointed the shot gun in her direction, then barked out a pained laugh and lowered it, turning away, his thoughts broadcasting what his hands were too full and his throat to raw to say. _Should've known, nosy bitch._

"I will not tolerate that sort of language, Dean Winchester. I'm here to help."

He snorted, dropping the rifle, and started shaking liberal amounts of salt onto his aunt's grave.

"Your uncle isn't coming back, Dean. He's moved on."

He turned to look at her, light from the moon reflecting faintly off his eyes. _How do you know?_

"I felt him pass. Felt your aunt do, too."

_Coward._

"Don't you be thinking that about your uncle, Dean. He was a good man."

_He was a liar._

"And you always tell the truth?"

He stiffened, but raised one shoulder in a beligerent shrug.

"You really believed it, didn't you. All those years, waiting for her to come back to you two, and when she didn't, you finally let yourself believe what the doctors said about you."

He looked up at her sharply, then started pouring the salt onto Dan's body. _You don't know anything about it._

"You ain't even gesturing now, Dean. When are you gonna get it through your thick head that I'm _psychic?_"

He snorted, but she noticed his thoughts didn't broadcast as loudly, after that.

"You're not damaged, boy."

_Yes, I am._

"You can speak just as well as anyone else. Just need practice."

He tossed the empty salt can to the side and reached down for the lighter fluid.

"Your momma didn't realize what she was doing to you, all those years ago --"

He whirled on her, then, crossing the distance between them faster than she would have thought possible. His face was so twisted in anger that she felt herself gasp and wondered for the first time if she might have misread the boy, if he were really as dangerous as he wanted people to believe. _You don't know ANYTHING about my mother!_

"She and Dan were friends, before either of them ever met Carrie."

He froze, and after a moment, she could see him start to tremble. Then he shook his hands in the air and turned back to the graves, pouring the lighter fluid on with even more abandon than he had the salt.

"They faced that demon together. And that night, in the fire, she went back into the house after she got you and Sam to safety."

_I don't want to hear this._

"She knew Dan could keep you safe. That's all she ever wanted for you boys."

_Wanted us ignorant. Not safe._

"They thought it was the same thing."

_They were wrong._ He stilled again, hand gripping the can of lighter fluid falling to his side, and she felt the realization wash through him.

"That's right. You learned long ago that Dan and Carrie were fallible. I know it hurts, son, but your momma was, too."

_She should have stayed with us._ Missouri caught a flash of fire and pain across Dean's mind, a brief image of a nursery, a man with yellow eyes, another man pinned to the ceiling, his face frozen in an expression of fear and pain. A flash of a four year old boy, scared and hurting, thrown into a wall. Of the man on the ceiling vanishing in the fire, and the man with the yellow eyes laughing. _He was dead. She should have stayed. She shouldn't have gone back in._

"Oh, Dean," Missouri gasped.

He tensed, then pulled out a book of matches, lighting them and tossing them in one fluid, professional movement. The graves caught, close enough together that it took only the single set of matches, and though Missouri already knew that Carrie and Dan's souls had moved on, she felt as though the last bits of them were letting go. Dean looked up at her, then, his face fully illuminated in the orange light of the fire, eyes drawn and glistening.

_Why did they leave me?_

Missouri didn't have the answer to that, so she simply stepped forward and opened her arms. He made no move towards her, so she stepped forward again, determined to give him comfort whether he wanted to take it or not.

He stayed stiff in her embrace, his chest shuddering slightly as he held back tears that had been threatening for twenty-two years.

"Let it go, Dean."

_She said not tell._

"I know, sweetie."

_Never to tell. I saw it all and she said I couldn't tell anyone._

Missouri wanted to curse Mary Winchester, but held it in. That wasn't what this child needed to hear, right now.

"The yellow eyed man. He was the same demon your mother and your uncle faced."

_It wants Sam._

She sucked in a breath.

_He's hiding things from me. He's going to leave, too._

"Talk to your brother, Dean. Your family's had too many secrets, already."

_Can't. Mom said. Never tell._ He shook in her arms, the effort of keeping stiff, strong, and silent exhausting him, but he wouldn't let go.

"It's alright, Dean. Your mother didn't want this. She didn't know what she was doing when she told you that."

_Never say a word._

"You're allowed to speak, Dean."

He shook his head, pulling away and reaching up to wipe at his eyes. The fire in the graves was already burning low. _I have to rebury them._

And just like that, the conversation was over. Missouri stepped back and bit down on a sigh. "You and your brother are going to need help on this. Please, you don't know me enough to promise me anything, but _please._ Look for that help."

He turned to look at her as he bent for the shovel. _Thank you for telling us about Uncle Dan. Sam and I are leaving in the morning._

"Stubborn. Just like your aunt."

_You should go now._

She nodded slowly. "Sam has my number."

He turned his back on her without nodding, slamming the shovel into the pile of dirt with a finality which she knew she couldn't argue with. She stepped back and watched him for a moment more before turning to leave.

"Good-bye, Dean Winchester. I hope someday you'll learn the whole truth."

And she hoped like hell that when he did, he'd live to let it set him free.


	6. Morning Moon

**Warnings:** AU, some language, violence  
**Spoilers:** General for seasons one and two  
**Author's note:** This is the story that kept me writing this series up to this point (you know, along with everyone's comments). It's one of the earliest that I imagined. Of course, the earliest is yet to be told. . . .

* * *

**Morning Moon**

When it came right down to it, there was only one thing in the world that could get Ellen angry enough to start smacking around the tables and chairs or slamming glasses onto the bar hard enough to crack them, but that one thing was big enough and important enough -- and _infuriating_ enough -- that she ended up acting that way pretty often.

Especially since that "thing" had turned thirteen.

"This isn't a discussion, Jo."

"Yeah, it's not." Jo was just as skilled at slamming things around -- hell, she'd learned it straight from Ellen, over the years. "Because I've made up my mind."

"I don't care what you think you've decided --"

"I'm not a kid!"

"You're sure as hell acting like one!"

"Maybe you should listen to her, Ellen."

Ellen whirled, nearly knocking one of the chairs from the table it was resting on. "You stay out of this, Maggie, you've done enough."

"She asked me to come get her, Ellen, what was I supposed to do, leave her there?"

Ellen's eyebrows went up. "Yes!"

"She was miserable!"

"She was getting an education!"

"She's _standing_ right _here!_" Jo stepped up between Ellen and the older blond. "Thanks for the ride, Maggie."

Ellen fumed at her daughter's back, but swallowed some of her rage as the phone rang. They all stood there silently for a moment before she finally nodded to Maggie. "Thank you for bringing her home." She headed for the phone, shooting a glare at Jo. "This isn't over, Jo. You don't have to do the summer term, but you are going back to school."

Jo huffed, then turned to finish getting the bar ready to open. Maggie looked between the two of them, then nodded and headed towards the back, to the room that Ellen had kept for her since Bill had died. Maggie and Jo had been thick of thieves since then, though Maggie was closer to Ellen's age. She'd thanked God for the woman's help back then, still did, most days, since Maggie was as adamant about Jo keeping out of hunting as Ellen was. But this wasn't what Ellen had hoped for, for her daughter. Working the bar was no way to get ahead in life -- it was enough for Ellen, always had been, but Jo was supposed to do something more.

She only barely managed to keep her continuing anger out of her voice when she picked up the phone. "Harvelle's."

"Ellen, it's Bobby."

"Singer. It's been awhile."

"It has. Am I calling at a bad time?"

Ellen turned to look at Jo, who was steadfastly _not_ looking back. "Just some family business, Bobby. You know how it is."

Bobby laughed. "I don't, and I don't want to. Maggie around?"

"Yeah, I'll go get her."

"Nah, just checking to see if she was in. I sent a couple of boys out your way, they'll want to talk to her."

Ellen frowned. "What's this about?"

"They're fire kids."

Ellen let out a low, hissing curse. "You think that's wise? You know Maggie tries to keep things quiet."

"I do, but these kids aren't like the others. They're hunters, for one."

"Woulda thought Maggie might've mentioned that." The "fire kids" were a bit of a pet project of Maggie's, a bunch of kids all born the same year who'd lost their mothers to a nursery fire on their six month birthday. As far as Ellen knew, there were three that Maggie kept track of, never getting close enough to talk to the kids in person, just watching over them, looking out for the demon she thought was responsible.

"Might be she missed these two. They're brothers, don't quite fit the M.O. Lost both parents, not just the mother. I've known one of them for years, the other just got started in the business this year, after his girlfriend got toasted."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Anyway, they got some information about the demon, figured it'd be good for them to knock heads a bit with Maggie, share some info and see if we can't get this whole thing figured out."

"Good thinking. How far out are they? I'll let Maggie know they're coming."

"Should get there in the next couple of hours. Thanks, Ellen."

"Not a problem, Bobby. You should stop back in, sometime."

"Just might do that. I'll talk to you later."

"Bye, Bobby." Ellen hung up and spent a moment just looking at the phone. She didn't really understand what was going on with the fire kids, what they meant in the grander scheme of things -- Maggie didn't often feel much like talking about it. To have a couple of them here, well. It made her nervous.

"Jo, do me a favor and get out some whiskey."

Jo's lips tightened and she crossed her arms. "What, so now bar work's good enough for me?"

"Don't you give me that. You aren't in school, you might as well be doing something useful. Go."

Jo huffed and stormed off. Ellen set about wiping down the bar, thinking over how to tell Maggie that Bobby'd sent some folks their way.

Whatever happened, it was bound to be an interesting evening.

* * *

They showed up a two hours later, after Ellen had unlocked the door, but before she'd gotten to turning the sign from "closed" to "open". She hadn't been certain what to expect -- most hunters were closer to her and Maggie's age, bitter old men and women whose lives had been so smacked around by the supernatural that they didn't look like they'd fit anywhere else. These two were almost like that, they had the right guarded look, and the uniform of jeans, boots, and flannels, but it was clear that the world had only just started to wear on them. The taller one, especially, looked like he'd be better suited hanging out with Jo in her dorm room than he was standing in the entrance to her roadhouse.

They both glanced around the bar, almost synchronised as they did it, before meeting her eyes and walking over, the shorter one leading by about a foot, hands loose at his sides, while the taller one shoved his hands into his pockets and gave her an open, cheerful expression.

"Hi," he said, and flashed her a smile that might've melted her back when she'd first met Bill, but these days just made her hackles rise. "I'm Sam, this is my brother, Dean. We're here to talk to Maggie?"

Ellen just raised her chin, giving the two of them an obvious once over and waiting to see if Sam's puppy-dog expression would fade. Dean met her gaze with a raised chin of his own, but didn't say a word. Sam's expression flickered, but held, and he tried again.

"Bobby Singer sent us."

Ellen nodded. "He told me. Maggie'll be out in a few moments." She looked at the two of them again. "You're hunters?"

Sam's expression flickered again, and Ellen caught confusion in the momentary change. "Uh, yeah. How did you --"

"Told me that, too. This place gets a lot of your folks on through. Can't say that I've heard much of you two."

Dean rolled his eyes, but continued to hold his tongue, which was a surprise. He didn't look the sort to keep his thoughts -- or his hands -- to himself. She'd have to watch him around Jo, especially considering the way her eyes lit up at the very sight of him. Her daughter didn't need to go through the same things Ellen had with Bill. She'd get a normal life if Ellen had to tie her to a chair to convince her of it.

Sam was clearly out of his element, though he was doing his best not to show it. He stood there as silent as Dean for a moment, mouth open as though to say something, then shrugged. "We keep a low profile."

"Guess so."

More silence, then Dean elbowed Sam and brought his hands up, moving them quickly through in some sort of code. Sam watched him, then turned back to Ellen and tried that smile on for size again. "Could we get a beer while we wait for Maggie?"

Ellen gave Dean a guarded look, then nodded. "Sure thing. PBR?"

Dean's lips quirked into a split second of smile, and Sam shrugged. Ellen looked to Jo only to find her already popping open two bottles and setting them on the bar.

Yeah, she'd have to keep a close eye on the situation.

Maggie came out of the back, then, head turned back over her shoulder as she called some last thing to Ash about a search she had him working on, and the two boys took their beers and turned to face her. She turned around and flicked her eyes over the boys the same way Ellen had, curious but with trepidation, and Ellen nodded. Sam smiled and stepped forward, hand out, but Dean had gone completely still, eyes wide, staring at Maggie. He breathed in sharply, and for the first time since he came into the roadhouse, opened his mouth.

"Mom."

* * *

Generally speaking, all hell didn't tend to break loose in Harvelle's Roadhouse until at least ten pm. Today it looked like it might happen a full seven hours early. Sam spun, eyes as wide as Dean's, mouth hanging open in blatant shock, and Jo dropped the pint glass she was filling for Maggie. Dean's fingers tightened hard enough on his bottle of PBR to turn his knuckles white, and Maggie's eyes widened, then narrowed as she tilted her head.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, an undertone to her voice that Ellen hadn't heard before. "I think you're mistaking me for someone else."

Sam turned again, back towards Maggie, shock and confusion written loud and clear on his face, so he missed the flash of agony that crossed Dean's, but Ellen didn't. She was watching him carefully, but even still, she didn't quite see him move to put down his beer before he turned and walked back out the door he'd entered not five minutes before. Ellen had seen men skedaddle that fast without running, but it had been a long time.

The door was slamming shut before Sam turned back around to register that his brother was gone. He turned back to Maggie, then the door, then to Maggie.

"I'm sorry," he said, then headed for the door as well, Ellen, Jo, and Maggie all hot on his heels.

They got outside to see Dean standing with his hands pressed to the roof of a familiarly-shaped black muscle car. Jo turned to Maggie and said "Didn't you used to --" but never finished the question. Sam walked straight forward, his expression tight.

"Dean," he said, and Maggie whispered "No," though Ellen was certain the boys couldn't hear it. She stepped back into the wall of the roadhouse, and Jo looked to Ellen as though she should know exactly what was going on.

She didn't. But she could guess.

Dean raised one hand and slammed it down onto the roof of the car with all his strength. Sam said "Dean," again, a hint of pleading in his voice, and Maggie said "Sam?" and both boys turned to look at her.

Ellen put out her arm and held it up in front of Jo. "Get back inside, honey."

Dean and Sam stood stock still in the parking lot, Dean with one hand still pressed to the roof, Sam halfway between him and the front porch. Maggie took a single step forward, her eyes wide and lined with red, and Ellen pushed against Jo's stomach, urging her back inside even as she wondered if she should be leaving these three alone, herself.

Sam swallowed and tilted his head. "How did you know my name?"

Dean let out a low noise in the back of his throat, and his hands tightened into fists against the car. Ellen recognized it now -- Maggie had had one like it, somewhere around ten years ago, though hers had been a rusted out, barely mobile piece of shit, where this one wore a few marks of good use, but otherwise looked newly minted.

"I think -- oh God," Maggie said, her hands coming up to the base of her throat as she looked between the two boys. "Look at you two. You're all grown up."

Dean made that noise again, almost a whimper, and the look on his face was so open and pleading that Ellen felt her heart break a little for him. He'd sounded so certain, back in the bar, but Maggie didn't have children. She'd had a family once, Ellen knew that much, but she'd lost them to the hunt as surely as Ellen had lost Bill.

Hadn't she?

Maggie took another step forward, and Sam stepped back towards his brother, looking over at him as though to demand an explanation, but Dean didn't meet his eyes. He stepped away from the car, paused, then crossed the rest of the distance to Maggie, standing right in front of her, head tilted down to look her in the eye, though he looked all of four years old, the way his eyes watered and begged Maggie to tell him that everything was okay.

"You shouldn't be here," was what she said instead, and the noise in Dean's throat was definitely a whimper, then, and Sam stepped up behind him, pressing his hand to Dean's arm even as Maggie lifted one of hers to touch his cheek. Dean closed his eyes at the touch, and Sam stared down at Maggie. She looked back at him, her mouth curling in a smile even though her cheeks were getting wet. Jo leaned foward against Ellen's arm.

"Mom, what's going on?" Her voice was low -- she was as hesitant to break the building moment as Ellen was, even by going back inside.

"Don't know for sure, Jo," Ellen said back, not taking her eyes off the three people in her parking lot.

"You're Sam and Dean Winchester," Maggie said, her hand going from Dean's cheek to hover a few inches from Sam's. Dean opened his eyes and nodded. "I'm so sorry, I should have --" She shook her head. "It's been so long, but I should have recognized you."

Dean trembled faintly in Sam's grip, but he didn't take his eyes off Maggie. "Mom," he said again, and Sam's eyes screwed up, in emotional pain or surprise, Ellen wasn't sure which. Maggie nodded.

"Yeah, love. It's me."

Dean slammed forward then, his arms going around Maggie in a fierce hug, leaving Sam hovering a few feet away until Maggie stretched out a hand to him and pulled him in. Ellen wrapped her own fingers around Jo's wrist and tugged her backwards, towards the door. Jo didn't resist.

They'd get their answers later. For now, this was a private moment.

* * *

By the time the bar opened at four and the first of the other hunters started straggling in, Maggie and her boys were tucked away at a table in the back corner, beers all around, where they were slightly less likely to be overheard. Ellen kept nearby even so, curiosity winning out over her desire to give the group the privacy they deserved. She'd known Maggie for almost twenty years, after all, and while she'd learned after Bill died that Maggie had been married and had children once, she'd been damned sure that Maggie had said she'd lost them all in a fire.

She just couldn't remember if Maggie had ever specifically said she'd lost them to death.

Dean was the first to break the silence that hovered over the table, in a manner of speaking. He cleared his throat, swallowed, winced, then finally lifted his hands to sign again, like he had at the bar. Maggie watched him in confusion before looking to Sam, who hunched futher into his jacket and slumped down into his chair, shooting occasional glances at his brother as though trying to work out some sort of puzzle. He shrugged at Maggie.

"He can't --" He shook his head in frustration, rubbing the bridge of his nose, then tried again. "He doesn't talk. Since the fire."

They were fire kids. They were Maggie's kids. God, that explained so much. . . .

Maggie nodded, her expression carefully neutral. "I don't know sign language."

Dean barked out a pained laugh and looked down toward the floor next to his chair. Sam flinched at the noise and kicked at the leg of the table. "He wants to know about your name."

Maggie sighed and took a long sip of her beer. "Why Maggie, you mean."

"Yeah."

"Mary Winchester is dead," she said simply, and this time, both boys flinched. Dean's hands came up again, and Sam was quick to translate.

"No, you're not."

"No, I'm not. But who I was. . . . You boys have to understand, I thought that fire happened because of me. I thought that staying with you, with your father, was the reason why the demon attacked us. I'd already lost John, I couldn't bear to lose you two, too." Dean looked up from the floor then, mouth tight and eyes wide. "I thought it was better this way. If Dan and Carrie took care of you, I could go after the demon and kill it. And then come back for you."

"But you didn't." Sam spoke without Dean's prompting, this time, though Dean nodded along.

"Not yet," Maggie -- or Mary, Ellen supposed -- said. "But I will. I'm getting closer every day. You two -- I thought you'd be in college, by now, like Jo was." Ellen scowled. "I thought maybe you'd be married, Dean. Have kids of your own. I wanted so much for you two to be happy."

Dean shook his head sharply. "How?" Sam flinched, the way he did every time Dean made a sound. Ellen could sympathize, the boy spoke like every noise hurt on the way out. Maggie shook her head.

"I don't know what you mean."

Dean leaned foward, elbows on the table, and started signing furiously. Sam struggled to keep up.

"He says -- he says how were we supposed to be happy without you around? How are we supposed to be happy not knowing the truth? Not being able to -- Dean, what do you mean?"

Dean shot a look at Sam and shook his head, then glared at Maggie, angling his head at Sam as though demanding that she explain to him. When it was clear she wasn't going willing or wasn't able, he let out a soft growl and started signing again. Sam watched without translating, his brows moving closer and closer together, then he turned towards Maggie.

"You did this to him?"

Oh, hell.

"What?" Maggie leaned back, guilt written across her face. "No, I --"

"You made your four year old son responsible for his baby brother, and then told him he couldn't _speak?_"

The few other hunters in the bar stopped what they were doing as Sam raised his voice, and turned to watch. Ellen decided it was time to intervene.

"Can I get you guys something to eat?" She asked loudly, stepping up behind Dean. She met Maggie's eyes and then looked sideways at the rest of the bar, willing her to understand.

She did.

"Actually, I was thinking the boys might like to see where I've been staying." She looked at Sam and Dean, who were both fuming silently, and gave them a weak smile. They stared back, then with a glance at each other, both nodded in unison. Ellen stepped back and kept a close eye on the three until they made it safely into the back room. She turned to look at the rest of the hunters, catching Gordon Walker's eye, specifically.

"Well? Anybody need anything, or are you all just planning to loiter?"

* * *

Ellen didn't know what had passed between the three Winchesters -- and it was odd, thinking of Maggie that way, when she'd always known her as a Harrison -- after they went back to Maggie's room, that night. She only knew that three of them were calmer, and seemed happier, the next morning when they gathered in the bar again for breakfast with Ellen, Jo, and Ash. Dean even smiled occasionally, a real smile, bright, young, and if Jo's expression was any indication, incredibly charming, though Sam kept shooting him looks like he wasn't entirely sure who he was.

Ellen would find out later that the night before was the first time Sam had ever heard Dean speak real words, but for the time being, she was forced to just watch the boy and wonder why his own brother seemed so foreign to him.

Over all, it was a pleasant meal, the boys and Ash teasing Maggie over her choice of name -- Harrison was her maiden name, and an obvious enough choice, but Maggie was apparently out of left field, and a reference to Mary Magdalene. Ash snorted "the Penitent", and went on to make allusions to prostitution until Dean smacked him hard enough in the arm to make him wince. Maggie had shrugged and just murmured "It seemed right," when they asked why she chose it.

The lighter mood of reunion might've continued straight through to dinner if a crash hadn't sounded from the front lot as they were clearing up, Dean and Sam insisting on helping out no matter how much Ellen insisted they leave it for her and Jo to take care of. At the sound, Dean froze, shot Sam a glance, then pulled a Colt 1911 from his waistband, holding it low as he headed toward the door. Sam followed after, calling a short "we'll check it out" over his shoulder, and Ellen nodded Jo towards the rifle behind the bar as she pulled out her own revolver and followed. Maggie and Ash made up the back of the pack, Maggie gripping her glock firmly and Ash armed with nothing more than his damned mullet.

The lot was empty save for Dean's Impala and Maggie's battered Corolla. The rear windshield of the Impala had been busted in, and when he spotted it, Dean lunged forward, letting loose a wordless growl.

The moment Ash was out the door, it slammed shut and Dean spun to face it, then was thrown sideways into Maggie's car by some invisible force.

"What the --" Ellen never got a chance to finish the sentence as she felt herself lifted off her own porch and hurled backward into the ice box, pain flaring through the back of her head as it smacked into the lid with a dull *clang*.

She didn't know she'd blacked out until she found herself blinking awake, not much later, judging by how little the sun had moved. She looked for Jo first, finding her just pulling herself up against one of the support posts and rubbing her head. Ash lay face down in the dust just off the porch, but his chest rose and fell, so Ellen sat up and looked for the others.

Maggie stood between the Impala and the Corolla, hand wrapped tight around Sam's elbow as he leaned against her, hand pressed to the side of his head and features screwed up in pain. They both stared toward Maggie's car, where Dean stood, hands out a little to either side and pressed to the doors, his head arched back against the roof, throat working to breathe against the contorted position. A blond girl Ellen had never seen before stood several feet in front of him, gazing with contempt at Sam and Maggie, her eyes hard and completely black.

Maggie took a step forward without releasing her grip on Sam's arm. "Let him go." Her voice had an odd importance to it, an echo that made Ellen shiver, but the demon just laughed.

"Getting a little rusty, there, Mary." It grinned, the expression sharpening the girl's already pointed features. "Guess you should have kept practicing." It stretched out a hand behind it, and Dean grunted, his knees buckling, though he stayed pressed against the car. Ellen shot a glance to Jo, silently ordering her to stay down, as she started shifting slowly to her feet and looking for her gun.

The demon didn't take its eyes off Maggie and Sam as it swung its hand in Ellen's direction and forced her back against the ice box. Dean slid a few inches down on the car and gasped for breath.

"Stay out of this, Harvelle, you'll live longer."

"What do you want?" Sam pulled his hand away from his head and squinted at the demon as though it gave him a migraine, and the demon laughed, moving its hand back towards Dean, who was slammed back into the car again, hard enough to make its shocks groan. Ellen noted with a flare of hope that the demon seemed to only be powerful enough to keep one of them pinned at a time, and while she hated seeing anyone contorted into the position Dean was forced into, him being held did free her up to try and figure out a way to get them all out of this.

If she survived, she was definitely getting Bobby to work out a hidden trap for the front lot. Every entrance to the roadhouse itself had one, but they'd never considered protecting the parking area.

"Oh Sammy," the demon said, fisting its hand and causing Dean to let out a choked howl. "We want you."

"No." Maggie tugged at Sam's arm, pulling him slightly behind her. "Leave," she said, and her voice echoed again, and the demon's hand opened sharply, long enough to let Dean slide all the way to the ground. His lips were tinted dark red and his breath shuddered in and out, but Ellen was relieved to see that he seemed to be alright, other than that. She had no idea what Maggie was doing with her voice, but she hoped she'd keep it up.

The demon shuddered head to toe as Ellen started to inch her way towards Dean. Its eyes flickered from black to blue and back again, and its lips curled into a sneer, but it continued as though nothing had happened. "You see, Sam, we've got plans for you. Plans that _don't_ include touching family reunions. So I'm here to offer you a choice." It lifted its hand sharply and Maggie cried out as she was flung back into the Impala, leaving Sam standing on his own in the open. Ellen shoved herself across the last few feet to Dean as quietly as she could, grabbing for the boy's hand. He spat blood onto the ground and looked up at her, grim and determined.

"You know how to make a devil's trap?" she hissed, and Dean nodded carefully. She dug her thumb into the dirt and started the first line of the circle, and he pushed himself up onto his elbow to dig into the ground and started the circle in the opposite direction.

It was a damned stupid plan, and if anyone else had tried to get her in on it, she would've laughed in their face. But they were all hurting and Maggie was in trouble and Ellen had no reason to believe that if the demon won it would leave her and Jo and Ash alone, either, and it was the only plan she had.

She just hoped Sam could keep the demon distracted long enough.

"See, we're willing to let you keep one of them," the demon was saying. "For now. Someone's gotta watch out for you, right? Make sure you keep breathing until we're ready for you. So which is it going to be, Sam?" It gestured towards Maggie again. "The estranged mother?" Ellen had a good five feet of circle done, and Dean was working quickly in the opposite direction, when the demon gestured back again without looking and threw him back into the car. "Or the lying brother?"

"No," Sam said, grinding it out between clenched teeth. He looked as though he might pass out at any moment. "I won't." He took a breath in the middle of the sentence, letting out a soft, high pitched cry of pain before continuing. "_Choose._"

"Then you'll lose them both."

Before the demon could move, before Ellen could keep drawing the circle for the trap, before Maggie or Dean could get themselves together enough to pull themselves off each other's cars, Sam's knees gave out, pitching him down into the dust, both hands gripping his temples. "No!" He screamed it into the dirt, then raised his head, his face flushed and his eyes resolved. "_LEAVE THEM ALONE!_"

Where Maggie's voice had been weighted and echoing with importance, Sam's seemed to be a physical force, and Ellen wasn't certain if she'd have managed to stay on her feet if she were standing. The demon's eyes widened and it wavered on its feet, then suddenly threw its head back and howled into the sky, black smoke pouring from the host body's throat and soaring higher and higher upwards until it turned sideways and streaked off over the trees. The lot fell silent again as time seemed to freeze, then the moment was broken as the blond girl collapsed -- unconscious or dead, Ellen wasn't sure -- into the dirt and Maggie and Dean slumped to their knees.

Ellen stared, trying to wrap her mind around what she had just seen. Sam pushed himself up to his feet and staggered towards Dean, who wrapped his arms over his chest and slumped down onto his side. Maggie gasped for breath and watched her boys with a look of terrible sadness, and Ellen felt her heart break for her.

Then Ash woke up.

"What the hell just happened?"

Ellen started to laugh. "That's a damned good question, Ash." She looked at the Winchesters, Sam and Dean huddled together against their mother's car as they tried to look each other over for injuires, Maggie crawling her way over with one arm pressed to her ribs. "Jo, go get the Johnny Walker. I'm thinking it's going to be a long morning."

Someone was damned well going to start explaining, and Ellen had a feeling there wasn't enough whiskey in the world to get them through it all.


	7. The Reasons

**Warnings:** Generally the same as the previous installments  
**Spoilers:** First season, some mention of information from 4x03  
**Author's note:** You're seeing the final result of several transformations in one story. I was hesitant at first to bring this POV into someone closer to the central drive of the story, but in the end I decided it was time. The stuff I'd made up for Mary has now, of course, been thoroughly Jossed, but I tried to bring in a bit of the detail from canon while still holding on to what I've already established. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**The Reasons**

Dean was giving Mary's car an oil change.

She sat at the window in what must have once been a beautiful living room, watching him circle the sedan, wiping his hands on a rag, tools and supplies dug up from the work shed set haphazardly on a nearby bench, all tumbled up with each other in a way that would have once made John curse and threaten people's jobs, back at the old shop. They'd been at Bobby's for three days, now, at Ellen's for two before that, and though Dean moved as easily as he had the first time she'd seen him in the Roadhouse, Mary's own joints were still stiff and complaining from being tossed around by the demon in the parking lot.

She wondered idly at that youth and strength, trying to remember when she had recovered so quickly, before age and hard living had started to wear at her bones.

"Maggie." She turned her head from the window to quirk her lips up at Bobby. He stood over her, one hand in the pocket of his ragged down vest, the other holding out a slightly dingy white coffee cup.

"I hope that's Irish."

Bobby snorted. "Given you enough of my whiskey, woman."

"There's not enough whiskey in the world, old man." She smiled again, for real, this time, and turned her head back towards the window. All she could see of Dean now where his legs, one bent at the knee, the other outstretched and tapping along with a radio she couldn't hear -- his upper body was beneath her car, doing whatever strange rituals were needed to make it run a little smoother.

"You could try talkin' to 'em, you know."

She turned back from the window, years of practice making hiding the slight pang of guilt that rose up from her belly as easy as breathing. "What?"

Bobby tilted his head forward, and she guessed he probably had just as much practice reading hidden emotions as she had hiding them.

Still, she kept up the pretense, lifting one shoulder as though she'd just happened to sit down at the window while the son she hadn't seen in over two decades was working just outside. The stack of books that made up her precarious seat shifted slightly, and she felt her ears heat up, probably turning a nice pink beneath the mask of her short, loose curls.

Bobby snorted. "Should've guessed it sooner. You Winchesters are all the same."

Mary gave him a cross look as she finally accepted the coffee. "I'll have you know I'm still a Harrison." She turned her head back towards the window. "But you're probably right."

That "probably" hurt. She had no idea how right or wrong Bobby might be about her boys. The man she knew more by reputation than by any sort of friendship knew more about her sons than she did. Had known her oldest son for much longer than she probably ever would, if the yellow-eyed man was back in business. "I used to picture them, you know. Would stop by Lawrence when I got the chance, catch a few short glimpses, whatever I could get without being noticed. I tried to imagine them all grown up, but it was hard. In my head they always looked like they did that night." She laughed softly to herself, resting her forehead against the glass. "When the six foot four year old in plaid pajamas got a little too weird, I pictured Dean looking just like John."

"Does he?"

Mary startled, pulling away from the window and spilling a bit of the coffee -- fortunately not that hot -- across her lap. She hadn't heard Sam come in. Hadn't heard him swap places with Bobby, that sneaky old rat bastard. "I didn't hear you come in."

"You've been avoiding us." The look he gave her was blank, an improvement on the anger and confusion of the first few hours after the demon's attack, but she missed the grin he'd worn, after the careful truce they'd come to in Ellen's back room. It'd been too much to expect it to last. "Which is a nice trick, considering you and I have barely left the house."

Mary opened her mouth to deny it, but stopped herself short. Sam deserved better than that from her. If she was going to be able to work with him to stop the yellow-eyed man, she'd have to start relearning how to use the truth. "I'm sorry."

Sam shrugged, as though the apology didn't mean anything, but she caught the subtle settling of his shoulders as he studied the view through the window. "Does Dean look like Dad?" he asked. "Like you expected?"

"No." His shoulders went up again, and she hurried on. "Not like I expected, Sam. Neither of you do, that's why I didn't --" She broke off and took a sip from her coffee. She didn't like thinking about how she'd betrayed her boys when they first found her, much less saying it out loud. "You're so much more. Handsome. Like. Like men."

"Twenty two years will do that."

She winced, consciously letting her face follow her gut. "You both look like him. Dean, more so. You actually take more after my father."

Sam's brows went up and he rocked backwards slightly, a small smile opening up his expression. "Really."

"His name was Samuel, too, you know."

The smile faded. "No. I didn't know that." He cleared his throat, looking down at his feet, then back up, his expression blandly pleasant. "Was Dean Dad's dad?"

"Deanna. My mom."

He barked a laugh and the full grin exploded across his face for a moment, and Mary couldn't help but return it. She could do this. There was no making up for the lost twenty-two years, but she could sit here and talk to Sam, reconnect a little. She tilted her head towards the window. "His first word was 'car'."

Sam chuckled. "That doesn't surprise me. Mine was, uh." He blushed. "Sandwich."

It was Mary's turn to laugh, though something like pain started to curl in her stomach. She'd missed Sam's first words. His first steps, his first t-ball game. All those things she and John had so carefully documented about Dean weren't hers to remember about Sam. "Sandwich?"

"Well, more like 'samch'. But I was pointing to a sandwhich. At least, that's what Dan told me."

"Dan." Mary shifted on the stack of books, leaning forward a little. "And Carrie. I never asked, how are --" She stopped when she saw his expression fell, felt a flash of pain that buried itself in her chest and closed down her face. "How?"

"Car crash. Just about a month ago."

Mary closed her eyes, sending up a silent prayer. "The demon?"

"We think so."

She nodded, dropping her head forward as her mind kicked into high gear, shuffling this new information in with all the rest she'd collected over the years, matching it up in ways she hadn't dared to contemplate.

The demon had told them, back at Cold Oak, that he only intended for one of his "kids" to survive. One to lead his army from Hell into the world. She and Dan had both made it out.

Now it was only her.

For a quarter century she'd let herself believe that the demon's plans for her were finished. Now she wanted to kick herself for ever believing it could be that easy.

"You should talk to Dean," Sam was saying, having no idea which way her thoughts were going. "He deserves that much."

She shook her head, keeping it bent. "I can't."

"I could translate --"

"No, Sam." She looked up at him, then, wishing she could send her thoughts to him, open her mouth and _make_ him drop the subject. But she was years out of practice, her attempts to order the demon around at Ellen's had proved that. "What would I say to him?"

"'I'm sorry' might be a good start."

She felt the hunter settle over and around her like a cocoon, closing off the inexperienced mother. "I'm not."

She could actually _see_ the fury light up in his eyes. "You made him mute."

"And if it kept the two of you safe for even a moment, then I have nothing to regret. I explained this to him, to both of you, back at the Roadhouse."

"Did you?" Sam straightened his shoulders, his hair falling back slightly from his forehead, and she was suddenly aware of just how _tall_ her baby boy had grown. How big. "Because I still don't get it. You're our _mother._ He was injured and scared and you _ordered_ him not to speak. Do you know what that did to him? The therapy. The drugs they used because they thought he was in shock. Special schools and being turned away from friends because he was different. Damaged. The _freak_. His teachers thought he was an idiot, his coaches put him on squads to look 'progressive'. He's had to work three times as hard his entire life just to get the things that you or I could get with a few simple words. Explain _that_. Tell me how that made us safer. Tell _him_ how that was what you wanted."

Mary shook her head. "You don't understand --"

"I understand perfectly. You're scared. You screwed up, and now you don't want to admit it." Sam stepped back, hand flung out towards the door, and lowered his chin. "Talk. To. Him."

It hit Mary like a hard-flung pillow, shoving into her lower back and her legs, forceful but somehow muted. Her muscles flexed and she found herself standing against her will.

Was this what she'd done to other people? How it had felt to Dean that night on the lawn?

How the hell had Sam inherited this power?

She fought against it but felt her feet move anyway. So she redirected it, using the momentum of Sam's words to bring her in front of him, only inches away. She stared up at him, feeling an echoing fury that matched his harden her jaw and narrow her eyes. "Yes," she said. "I screwed up. I thought the demon was after me, and I thought that if Dean never told anyone what he saw that night, you two could stay hidden. But I was wrong, Samuel. My power's fading. Yours is just starting to grow."

Sam swallowed, eyes darting to the side, but he didn't fall back. When he opened his mouth, the strange force that underwrote his words was gone, and he just sounded tired and sad. "Talk to him."

She studied him for several more moments, picturing in her mind's eye the happy baby she'd put to bed that night, so many years ago. He was still there, hidden beneath years of growth and months of resentment. She nodded.

"Fine."

She turned to pick up her coffee, wanting to steel herself for the confrontation she felt was about to occur. For the anger -- or worse, silent understanding -- from her oldest son. She looked up out the window for one last unobserved glimpse of him, paralleling the man she'd loved despite every instinct she'd had not to let anyone too close -- and froze.

She dropped the coffee cup and headed for the door at a dead run, hearing Sam's lumbering steps at her heels and Bobby's lighter ones not far behind. She burst into the yard, stopping just short of the growing puddle of motor oil swamping the wheels of her car, taking in the scattered tools and the discarded rag. She turned, catching Sam's wide-eyed stare and the movement of Bobby's hand reaching for a gun or a flask or both, but not a single sign of the one she was looking for.

She turned back, then to the others again, then to the house, to the road, not wanting to accept the dread creeping up her throat.

"Dean?" Sam called, stepping up next to her. "Dean!"

Bobby dropped into a crouch near the rear of her car, his finger swiping along the ground, then waving past his nose. Though she knew what he'd found, Mary couldn't hold back a flinch when he spoke. "Sulfur." He straightened, pulling his hat from his head, and looked around. "They've got him."

Sam took two steps forward, then stopped, and when he opened his mouth again, Mary joined him.

"DEAN!"


	8. Take Another Hit

**Warnings:** Dark. Violence, the nastiness of children, and character death. Does not have a happy ending.  
**Spoilers:** Season one  
**Author's note:** This is the second to last fic in the 'verse. This fic is unbeta-ed.  
Please note: This is the last of the bit that I have already finished writing. The final part in this series will take a bit longer to post than the rest of it has.

* * *

**Take Another Hit**

Sam's earliest memories were made of smoke and flashes of light, indistinct patterns and faint mumblings, all jumbled up out of order, tumbling around loose in his head like brightly colored blocks he built into slightly different shapes each time he tried to pick them up.

Every one of them had Dean in it.

There was one in particular Sam revisited more frequently than the others, whenever he was feeling particularly masochistic or self-recriminating. He'd never shared the memory with anyone.

He'd been to preschool or day care or maybe even just the park, he couldn't be sure which. A boy there had known him -- the kid was too unremarkable in the memory to be called a friend. He'd known Dean, too, by reputation if nothing else, and had asked, in a child-like, guileless way, why Sam's big brother was a retard.

It was the first time Sam had heard the word at all, much less directed at his brother. It wouldn't be the last, by far. That day, Sam had only recognized it as an insult by the way the boy spoke the word, and he'd immediately denied it.

"My sister says he is," the boy said. "She says he can't talk."

Sam went home that day and found Dean in their room. He walked right up, poked his brother hard in the stomach, and demanded to know why he was a retard.

Years later, Sam would realize that this had been right around when Dean was first pulling out of his shell, first starting to really deal with their parents' death and his subsequent handicap, and that Sam's actions, unthinking and innocent in a way only a small child could be, had possibly set Dean back several steps in his development. At the time, all Sam knew was that his retarded brother punched him in the mouth and then refused to look at him or sign to him for a whole week.

* * *

"Where's Dean?" Mary loomed over the man in the chair, looking somehow large and imposing, despite her relatively small stature. Sam used to imagine what his mother might look like when he was growing up, but he sure as hell had never pictured this: short cropped hair frizzy and wild from too many hard-water showers in too many skeezy motel rooms, her face red and drawn from long hours on the road. "Where is my son?"

The man tied to the chair grinned, his solid black eyes flashing. "Dead."

Sam winced and Mary threw more holy water at the thing. "Liar."

The man's scream tapered off into a harsh, pained laugh that was almost worse than the screaming had been. "You wish. Can't say he lasted very long. We like a guy who screams and he, well. He didn't much have the voice for it."

Sam swallowed, but forced himself to stay back and quiet. He could try ordering the man to tell the truth, but he was terrified that he already was. Dean couldn't be dead. Sam would know. Maybe they hadn't always been the best brothers in the world but Sam would _know._ He was psychic. He knew these things.

Right, just like he'd "known" his mother was dead all those years. Like he'd "known" his brother was just a mechanic, and his uncle was a theology professor with a thing for esoteric art.

There was another splash and the loud, grating hiss of water turning to steam, strangely matching the hiss the demon let out as it tried to control its pained reaction. Sam watched, forcing himself to remain passive, as the demon ducked its head, caught its breath, and grinned again.

"Aaaah!" It said, a high pitched facsimile of a choked scream. "That's all we got. 'Aaaah! Aaaah!' Wouldn't even beg." It tilted its host body's head and smirked at Sam. "Too bad, really, because the first scream? That was killer. The kind of sound we live for. Wild and uncontrolled. Almost --" and it grinned again, flashing its teeth as it bit off the next word, "-- inhuman."

Mary lashed out with one hand, striking the grin from the man's face. "Sam, start reading."

It took a moment for Sam to find his voice, the sound of Dean's scream -- almost too easy to imagine, having heard the strange sounds his brother produced in distress many times throughout his childhood -- echoing in his ears. Mary turned her head. "Sam."

He could hear the slight reverberation in the name, though it didn't seem to affect him. Still, he nodded, cleared his throat, and started to read.

* * *

Sam took point while Mary worked the safe. He knew he shouldn't be surprised any more at the varied, less-than-legal talents his mother possessed, but he couldn't help the thrill of shock that ran through him as he stood over her crouched form in a cabin in Colorado, a pistol weighing heavily in his hands.

He didn't even know what they were stealing.

The demon had spoken, though it had taken most of the exorcism and every ounce of Voice Sam and Mary had between them. Dean was alive. The demons were willing to trade him for whatever was in that safe. Sam didn't have it in him to care what it was. It was enough to know it would get Dean back. Enough to know there was a Dean out there to _get_ back.

Mary stilled and Sam shot her a glance. "You got it?"

"Hold it right there."

Sam jumped and spun, raising the gun automatically and cursing himself for not having heard the man's approach. He'd gotten a lot better at that, improved by leaps and bounds since leaving Palo Alto behind, but by the looks of the old man standing across the room from him, rifle aimed precisely at Sam's center mass, the guy was light years more experienced.

"Don't shoot," Sam said, and because he was a _complete_ genius, he didn't even put any Voice behind it. Nothing to see here, just a cowering victim with a pea shooter. It was a wonder Dean hadn't dumped him at Bobby's months ago and never looked back.

"Maggie," the man said, eyes never leaving Sam's face. "What're you doing with my safe?"

Sam heard his mother shift behind him. "Daniel. I need the Colt."

"You know I can't do that."

"And you know I wouldn't ask if it weren't just that important."

Their words flashed back and forth around Sam, an old familiar argument that never ended, and it took him a moment to catch up. "We're here for a gun?"

Daniel still hadn't taken his eyes off Sam's, and his lips twitched into an expression only hunters ever seemed to wear. "Who's the jailbait, Maggie?"

"My son."

The smirk vanished as Daniel's eyebrows climbed. "I thought your sons were dead."

"One of them is going to be if I don't get the Colt."

Sam held still as he sifted through the countless questions he had, lining them up in order of importance the way he used to imagine doing in a court of law. He wasn't even remotely interested in continuing to stand here like an idiot while his estranged mother had a shouting match with a man holding a rifle.

He should've asked the questions ages ago. But in the four days since Dean had been taken and he and Mary had teamed up, Sam had lost the habit of asking questions. His mother was tight-lipped to a fault, a trait he remembered Carrie remarking on in Dean, one he hadn't realized was hereditary, and neither of them had the patience for lengthy explanations when Dean's life was on the line.

He turned his head, keeping the rifle barrel in his peripheral vision. "You have a Colt."

Mary flicked her eyes in his direction. "Not one that can kill _anything_."

Sam whipped his head back towards Daniel. "We need that gun."

"To save your dead son?" It was disconcerting, the way the man spoke to Mary while staring at Sam. "I'm sorry, Maggie, son of Maggie. Not a chance."

Mary straightened from her crouch in front of the safe, pulling up to her full height, her head next to Sam's shoulder. When she spoke, the air in the room seemed to vibrate. "Give me the Colt."

They drove off under a hail of bullets from Daniel's rifle. Sam didn't get the chance to ask his questions.

* * *

Sam was eight years old when Dean's therapist called the whole family in for a meeting. Sam was excited. He liked Dr. Martinson -- she always kept a candy jar on her desk and she had toys all over her office, and let Sam play with them whenever he had to wait with Carrie for Dean to finish a session. Dean was excited, too, twitchy with nervous energy and anticipation, and Sam had picked up on that excitement. He just about bubbled out of his skin when Dr. Martinson looked him in the eye and asked him to pay close attention while they talked, said she had some important news for him as well as everyone else.

There were a lot of people who didn't take an eight year old seriously. Dr. Martinson, a psychologist specializing in child development and family structure, wasn't one of them.

"I want to mainstream Dean," she said, meeting Dan and Carrie's eyes, then looking down and smiling at Sam. "He and I have been talking about it for the last couple of months, and we're both confident that Dean's ready." She looked at Dean, who didn't look all that confident to Sam, but twitched his lips and fluttered his hands in agreement, nonetheless. She looked back at Carrie and Dan. "With your permission, I'll be enrolling Dean part time at the middle school next year. He'll spend his mornings in the program here, as per usual, and his afternoons in regular classes. If it goes well, we may be able to register him full time by the spring."

Carrie beamed. Dan looked to Dean for confirmation, then nodded seriously. Sam wasn't sure why he'd had to listen so closely. Then Dr. Martinson met his eyes again.

"This isn't going to be easy for your brother, Sam," she said. "Dean's very special, and kids his age don't always like people who are different. He's going to need the support of his whole family, especially you."

Sam looked back and nodded. He felt a weight settle in along his shoulders and chest, like when he put on his backpack. He felt suddenly strong, grown up. Dr. Martinson had looked at him and saw him fit and asked him to take care of his brother, just like his brother took care of him.

He decided the first step to taking care of his brother was to understand the thing that made Dean so different. So, two days after he left the second grade, Sam took a vow of silence.

Carrie humored him, and when Dan looked at him strangely, she whacked him in the arm and they went for a private, whispered "parent talk", and when they came back, Dan ruffled Sam's hair and said he was proud of him. Sam took an afternoon to practice forming his hands into the signs that Dean used to communicate. It was hard -- he had to remind himself to knock on the table or stamp his foot to get attention instead of just calling out -- but Carrie approved and Dan was proud and Sam was learning more and more about his big brother by the hour. He started making plans for how he would get by at summer camp when there'd be people who didn't know sign language, started practicing his letters more, trying out drawing small figures and recognizable shapes. He spent all afternoon on it, an eternity of hours before Dean came home from . . . Sam didn't remember where he came home from. Dean was always out of the house in those days, bouncing from therapy session to special class, softball team for socialization to art classes for creative outlet. Almost anything as long as it got him out of the house and out of his shell for at least awhile every day. So there was no telling which Dean had been to that day, just that he wasn't around and then Carrie told Sam to wash up for dinner and he went up to their room and there he was.

Sam grinned and waved his hand in a hard hello, then twisted his hands into the sign for dinner.

Dean stared at him. Sam's grin fell and he tried again.

_What's wrong?_ he signed, being very careful to get his fingers into the right shapes and hold them to the right places on his body.

Dean's eyes flicked from Sam's hands to his face, his brows drawing together. _Why aren't you talking?_

And Sam grinned again, and took his time, explaining all the ideas he had for how he would get along all summer without talking, showing Dean his notebook and the cards he'd made with pictures of balls and cats and tomatoes on them, all the things that were easy to draw or hard to spell. He showed Dean how he'd taught himself to snap his fingers, how he'd found his toy owl whistle to use when the finger snapping wasn't loud enough. Through it all, Dean just kept staring at him.

Then Sam finished. And Dean punched him in the stomach.

Sam doubled over, tears springing to his eyes. "Owwwwww! You hit me!"

Dean looked triumphant, and Sam realized what he'd done. He'd worked _all day_ on not speaking and Dean had ruined it and -- and -- and --

And Sam flew at his brother, his own hands flying, curling into claws to grab at Dean's hair while he kicked at his legs. They tumbled off the bed, Dean letting out soft grunts in counter point to Sam's shouts, neither really winning because Sam was too small and Dean didn't really want to hurt him. Finally, Sam ended up on top, pounding his fists down onto Dean's chest.

"You wrecked it! I was helping! I hate you, you -- you jerk!"

Dean smirked at him again and gestured, fingers forming a letter B and smacking against the side of his face. Which was, of course, when Carrie came in.

"Dean Winchester, don't you dare call your brother that!"

And that was how Sam learned the sign for "bitch".

* * *

"Don't use the Voice," Mary told him. Sam stared at her. She didn't take her eyes off the road.

"Right," he said. "Because that's worked so well for you over the years."

"It's important, Sam," she said. "You've unlocked that door, but you don't want to open it up any further."

This was Mary to a T. Forget the sweet, devoted mother stories his family -- his _real_ family, no matter what his birth certificate might say -- had told him over the years. Mary was stubborn, cold, hypocritical, and secretive. She was a bitch with a gun, a mercenary, and there were times that Sam was almost glad Dean was missing. That he couldn't see what his beloved mother really was.

He twisted sideways in his seat, leveling his very best glare at the side of her face. "I'm not your soldier," he said. "I do know what I'm doing."

"You really don't."

"You didn't seem to have a problem with it when I stopped that demon in Nebraska from gutting you and Dean."

"You shouldn't have done that, either."

She wouldn't bend, and Sam didn't feel like arguing. He shifted back against the door and stared out the windshield, shaping his fingers into a letter B and tapping it to the side of his face.

"Yeah," Mary said. "Well, you're the son of one."

He glanced over at her, his eyes wide, but her eyes stayed glued on the road.

"Promise me, Sam," she said. "You won't use the Voice again."

"Yeah," Sam said, looking out to the passing corn field, letter B still pressed to his jaw. "Whatever."

* * *

They'd kept Dean tied to a bed in an apartment complex in Jefferson City.

He looked like crap -- as bad as Sam had ever seen him. His skin was pale where it wasn't marked with bruises or the remains of days old grease left over from his work on Mary's car. Sam's rush forward to check on his brother was halted by a firm backhand to the chest. Mary stepped in front of him, ignoring his wide eyed stare at the back of her head, and unscrewed a flask of holy water.

"We have to check, Sam."

Sam swallowed, then nodded and stayed back as she splashed water over Dean's prone form. Dean jerked against his bonds, letting out a hoarse cough, fingers fluttering into the shapes of signed words, and Sam didn't wait to see if his mother was satisfied before hurrying over and untying Dean's hands. "Hey. Hey, you're alright, man. We got you."

Dean blinked blearily at him, then around the room, pausing for a moment on Mary before continuing on. His hands flopped against the mattress twice, then finally came up shakily against his chest.

_Drugged._

Sam nodded, repeating the word out loud for Mary's benefit as he tugged and lifted Dean into a seated position. Dean pushed back at him, swiping at his chest with a limp hand and nearly clocking Sam in the chin with the other, but between the drugs and the beatings, he barely had the strength to form words, let alone hold himself up. Sam bundled him in against his chest, then tugged him slowly to his feet.

"We've got to get out of here."

Dean blinked at Mary, his hands shaking hard despite the way he braced his arms against his stomach.

_They wanted a weapon._

Sam opened his mouth to translate, but a *thunk* against the bedroom door reminded them that Dean's demon guards were still there, and Mary moved to push them towards the window.

"We have to _go_," she said. "We'll talk when we're on the road."

Dean offered no resistance when Sam slipped his arm over his shoulder, but he didn't offer much by way of help, either. His head listed against Mary's when she helped Sam maneuver him onto the fire escape, and something tightened in his chest when he saw her lips brush the tips of Dean's matted hair. Then the door cracked and moments later they were passing Dean between them as they rushed down the fire escape and out into the street.

_They wanted a weapon,_ Dean signed again.

"Yeah." Sam patted absently at Dean's shoulder, then adjusted his grip when Dean's knees dipped closer to the sidewalk. "Don't worry, it's safe."

And then Sam was on the ground, and there was a man on top of him and he was punching and punching and punching Sam in the face. He thought about blocking, then wondered insanely if the drug they used on Dean was contagious, because his arms didn't seem to be working.

There was the sound of an explosion. The man stared down at Sam, wide-eyed and slack-mouthed as sparks flickered in the hole that'd formed in the side of his head. The man toppled, and Mary was there, tucking the Colt away and holding out her hand.

"You said you'd left it in the car," he said, ignoring her hand and pushing himself shakily to his feet.

Mary glanced back at Dean, propped like a drunk against the alley wall. "I lied."

* * *

The cabin was Mary's idea, a ramshackle -- and Sam was now certain he hadn't truly known the meaning of that word until he saw the place -- two room thing hours from Jefferson City and the hoard of demons that had taken over the Sunrise Apartments. Sam sat on a couch that he hoped to god was originally dull green and brown while Mary paced back and forth in front of them. Dean's head weighed about three thousand pounds on Sam's left shoulder, but Sam wasn't about to let his brother out of his sight. Besides, if the couch was disgusting, the bare mattress in the other room of the cabin might well have been a biohazard, and Dean had enough problems without being eaten alive by bedbugs while he slept off the last of the drugs in his system.

A quick check by Mary had assured them -- well, assured her and led to promise after promise to Sam -- that Dean was suffering no more than a drug cocktail hangover and a few nasty bruises, despite how long it had taken for them to find him. Dean was going to be just fine. Which left other questions hanging in the air to deal with.

Sam watched his mother pace, picking at the small folds in his jeans. "That guy in the alley," he said. "You know there was a person in there."

Mary paused and looked at Sam. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. Sam had always assumed that Dean had developed his eloquent, withering glare as a defense mechanism due to his muteness, but he was now starting to think it was actually genetic.

Sam stared back. If it was genetic, then he damned well got it, too.

Mary started pacing again. "He was killing you."

Dean grunted softly in the back of his throat. Sam looked down and saw his eyelashes flutter. He looked back up.

"You just can't ever deal with what you've done, can you?" He wasn't talking just about the man in the alley way any more, and they both knew it. Hell, Dean probably knew it, too, and he was still half out of his head.

"We're not talking about this now, Sam." Mary made it to the window and paused again, scanning the thick line of salt she'd placed on the sill. "The demons aren't going to give up this easy. We need a game plan."

"Well maybe it's time you told us the whole story then," Sam said, his hands clenching into fists in his lap as he resisted the urge to jump to his own feet. The only reason he didn't stand and use every inch of his height against his mother was the weight of his brother against his side.

Dean's hand smacked gently into Sam's ribs and he looked down. His brother was signing, hands wobbling in the ASL equivalent of slurring his words. Sam couldn't make it out, at first, until Dean grunted again and pushed himself further upright, taking his weight back from Sam and letting his head fall against the back of his couch. He frowned and stared at his fingers, took a deep breath, then started again.

_Sam's right._

Sam blinked. He was?

Mary stared at Dean, then looked pointedly at Sam.

"He's agreeing with me."

Dean nodded, hands working again and Sam hurried to translate.

"You've been lying to us from the beginning. We deserve to know the truth."

He never thought he'd see the day. The way Dean spoke about Mary growing up, and the way he deferred to her even as little as an hour after reuniting in Nebraska, Sam was certain that Dean would rather dig himself into his own grave then go against his beloved mother's word.

"We don't have _time_ for this," Mary said, striding back to the couch. "This demon isn't just going to stop. John _died_ for this --"

Dean's hands worked furiously. _And we're going to die _too_ if you don't --_

The limited light of the electric lantern started to flicker and all three of them froze. Sam had never seen his brother's eyes go so wide.

_It's here._

Sam didn't need to translate. Mary had come to the same conclusion.

_Where's the gun?_

"He wants the gun."

Mary shook her head. "I've got it. It's safe."

Dean shook his head. _I overheard while they were --_ His fingers fluttered uncertainly and he swallowed. _I know what to do. Give it to me._

Sam translated automatically, eyes glued to Dean's hands, but he didn't miss the way Mary tensed at the demand.

"Trust me on this Dean --"

Dean shook his head harder, starting to get agitated. _This is bullshit. When are you going to trust _me_?_

Mary wavered for a moment, pulling the Colt from the back of her jeans, her fingers white around the grip. "This isn't your fight, Dean. Let me handle it."

_Give me the gun._

Sam looked from his mother to his brother, inching forward in his seat. Dean was fulling supporting his own weight now, the effects of the drugs wearing off surprisingly fast.

Maybe a little too fast.

"Mom's right, Dean. You're in no condition to --"

_Give. Me. The. Gun._

Sam stood. "Don't give it to him."

The look on Mary's face was shocked. The one on Dean's was apoplectic.

"Sam?"

Sam shifted to face Dean, his back to his mother. He stared hard into his brother's face, the way he held his body, the way his hands shaped his words.

"That's not Dean."

Dean's jaw dropped, his eyebrows shooting up. Sam felt Mary step up close behind him.

"How do you know?"

Sam shook his head. "He's just -- he's _different._"

Dean's fingers started shaking again. _Sam, what're you talking about?_

"I know Dean better than anyone. I don't know how it got past the holy water, but that's not Dean."

Mary stepped forward again, shifting her weight to place Sam slightly behind her as she raised the Colt.

"You're absolutely sure?"

Dean stared from Mary to Sam and back again, his hands now shaking too hard to form words. Sam swallowed.

He wasn't. He just knew his brother. Dean _would_ have taken Mary's side. He wouldn't bring up an argument, not now, not in the middle of a crisis. And he sure as hell knew better than to ask to handle an unfamiliar firearm when he wasn't at 100%, not when there was a well trained soldier like Mary on hand, one who knew the weapon, to take point. "I -- yes."

Dean deflated. It was a tiny thing, the way his shaking hands dropped an inch, his brows lowering, his whole body curling inward a few degrees, but to Sam it felt like being punched in the mouth all those years ago. Dean nodded, then spread his hands wide, not needing signs or words to get his point across.

_Then shoot me._

Mary leveled the gun at Dean's head, and Sam wished he could close his eyes against the cold determination in her eyes, or the echoing expression in Dean's. Mary cocked the trigger. Dean's gaze didn't waver. The moment seemed to stretch into a lifetime, suspended in tension that made the air vibrate and sing against Sam's skin.

Then Mary spoke.

"Show yourself."

When Mary used the Voice, Sam could feel the sound echo against the insides of his skull. Mary wasn't using the Voice now. She was using something much, much more powerful.

She'd opened the door. The one she'd made Sam promise not to toy with. She'd thrown it open and was now running through full tilt.

Dean's head rocked back like he'd been shot and his eyes went wide, then fell shut. When they opened again, just a second later, they were filmed over with a swirling, sickly yellow. He smiled.

It was the most horrible expression Sam had ever seen on his brother's face.

"You've been practicing."

Sam shivered. Dean's voice, the few times Sam had heard him speak, had been broken. It had sounded like Dean was forcing the words through shards of glass and past blockades of barbed wire. Those three words held none of the scratch and squeak that Sam was used to. They were a smooth, pleasant rumble, cocky and seductive. They were what Dean's voice _should_ have been, if Mary had never stolen it from him.

Mary's aim with the gun never wavered. "Get out of him."

Dean tilted his head. "Or, what? You'll kill me?" He looked down at his chest, then back up, lips curling in a self-satisfied smirk. "And ruin this body? Oh, but wait. Maybe it's already ruined. Maybe Dean's already dead, stuck inside his own animated corpse for the final showdown." Those yellow eyes went wide, Dean's face falling slack in childish innocence. "Maybe it's better to leave me in here. You don't want to lose your little boy too soon."

Sam shot a glance at Mary. "Mom, you can't --"

Mary's voice dropped an octave, and the air shivered with the force of her will. "Get out of him."

Dean gagged once, then recovered, mouth forming a soft "tsk-tsk". "You don't honestly think that's going to work, do you?" He glanced over at Sam, as though to get him on his side, then back again. "I made you what you are, Mary Harrison. Why would I give you power over me?"

Sam's eyes went wide. "It's you."

"And he gets it! Just a little slow on the uptake, there, Sammy. But don't worry, we've got a wonderful consolation prize for you."

Mary stepped to the side, putting herself more firmly in front of Sam while still keeping him in her peripheral vision. Her aim never faltered. "Get out of him."

"Really, Mary, we just went over this --"

Mary snorted, the sound so sharp and loud that even the demon fell silent. "I know you gave me the power, Azazel." Dean's face didn't move, but Sam suddenly had the feeling the demon inside him flinched. "It took me a long time to work it out, but you had to. To get what you wanted, you had to give a human power over demons. _All_ the demons."

The demon in Dean frowned. "You're not that strong."

Mary smiled. "Wanna bet?" She stepped forward. "Get out of him."

Dean gagged again, his hands coming up to his throat, the yellow in his eyes flickering for just the barest moment. "Step back. Or I'll make your precious little boy bite out his own tongue."

Mary shrugged. "Go ahead. Not like he can talk, anyway."

Even the demon looked a little shocked at that one. He smiled wickedly. "Oh now that's just cold." He glanced at Sam. "What do you think of your momma now, Sammy?"

Mary's finger tightened over the trigger. "Get out of him. _NOW._"

This time, Dean's gag actually brought up a little puff of black from between his lips, which the demon sucked back in with a pained gulp. "No."

Mary's lips lifted at the edges, and though Sam had spent the last several days getting firmly acquainted with just how much of a hardass his mother could be, this was the first time he'd found her scary. "Get out of him," she said one last time, "and into me."

The next few moments were chaos. Sam threw himself at Mary, now convinced she'd gone completely insane, only to be met by a wall of force which flung him backward across the room, well out of the line of fire. Dean's mouth opened and smoke poured forth. When the last tendril left him, Dean's eyes -- no longer yellow -- went wide and he threw out his hand as though he could pull it back in by will alone, letting out a broken, bloodied "NO!" that seemed to rock the very foundations of the cabin.

It did no good. Mary opened her own mouth, taking in the roiling smoke in a single, long breath with a sound Sam could only describe as the howl of Hell itself. Then her mouth snapped shut, her eyes went wide and yellow and she smiled.

And raised the Colt to her own chin.

And fired.

* * *

Before he learned the truth, Sam had only been in a single real fight. Dean had taught him how to punch and kick and brawl with the best of them, had taken him to the gym and demanded he practice, signing time and again that Sam needed to be prepared, that he never knew when he might need to defend himself. He got Sam to beat on heavy bags until his knuckles were bloody, and even tried to get Sam to spar, try his moves out on an actual moving, thinking target, though Sam had always refused.

Before he learned the truth, Sam had only used the skills his brother taught him on one living person.

And that person was Dean.

When Dean grabbed him by the shoulders in his bedroom, yanking him up from the mattress and away from the flames swallowing Jess on the ceiling, Sam fought and punched and kicked the whole way. Dean shoved him bodily out the door and down the stairs onto the tiny lawn that fronted the building, ignoring every swipe and every jab, blocking Sam's attempts to escape and run back in at every turn.

When he and Dean faced each other in the parking lot, standing by the side of Dean's beloved Impala, and Dean refused to let him back in, refused to explain what was going on, refused to explain where he had been and why he'd been lying and how he'd known to be in that room at that time to grab Sam and why, _why_ he hadn't rescued Jess as well, Sam threw his entire body weight into a hook that caught Dean across the side of the face, immediately opening a cut on Dean's cheekbone and nearly knocking them both over.

And when that didn't make Dean talk and didn't make Sam feel better, he did it again. And again. And again.

Dean taught Sam everything he knew about fighting. Sam had never gone up against another living person before, not with any real training or intent to injure. Dean could easily have blocked him, taken him down, made him stop and think and calm the _fuck_ down before the authorities showed up and Sam got his ass arrested.

But all Dean did was stand there and take it.

The look on Dean's face when Sam finally ran out of steam and collapsed, half sobbing, to the asphalt, was burned into Sam's mind forever. It was a look of shock and loss and overwhelming grief. And it was a look of deep, scarring guilt.

It was an expression Sam would carry with him to his grave. And it was the same expression Sam saw on his brothers face as their mother's body slumped to its knees, then toppled over onto its side with a dull, muted thump.


	9. Birds of Passage

**Warnings:** I wrote much of this shortly after watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body", if that means anything to you.  
**Spoilers:** Season one.  
**Author's Note:** Beta-ed by roque_clasique, missyjack, and maisfeeka.

* * *

**Birds of Passage**

They burned Mary Winchester on the first Monday in May, in an empty field some fifty miles outside of town. Sam kept calling it "cremation", and looked between Bobby and Dean or Jo and Ellen who'd driven out the night before, waiting for someone to say something.

Hell, maybe he was hoping for a chorus of "Amazing Grace." Dean didn't ask.

It was a clear night, warm and dry, and the pyre caught and burned fast, the crack and pop of the tinder the only eulogy. It was a hunter's funeral, quiet, quick, and without ceremony. The way it should be.

Except that the wrong body was burning.

Dean had attended three funerals before that night. The first he only remembered as big and dark and far too loud. There was no casket - John Winchester didn't leave enough behind to be buried - but giants and strangers had cried and touched Dean's head and Sammy had wailed through the whole thing. Dean wanted to tell him that it was alright, that Mom would come and find them soon, and that _angels were watching over them_, but the words had all dried up and burned away.

The second had been about the same, possibly even the same church, only instead of Sammy crying it was Julie, a deaf girl from Dean's communication therapy class whose father had been t-boned by a drunk driver. Dean was sixteen, and he stood at her side in the receiving line, lending her his shoulder. Mourners clasped her hands and said "I'm so sorry" and he wanted to scream at them all for taking her words away. Lips and throats were unreliable, and Dean's had burned again, as though he'd only just watched his mother turn and walk back into the fire.  
That night during the wake, Dean found Julie in her parents' room, and while her family sang and talked and cried downstairs, Dean and Julie gave their words to each other. Hands were good for talking, but Julie didn't want that, so they taught themselves to use them for other things.

The less said about the third funeral the better, save that smoke had clenched around Dean's throat again and rested there heavily until he'd come back that night with salt and a lighter. Dan and Carrie had never been John and Mary, but Dean knew they deserved to go out right, and funerals had to have a fire.

Dean didn't go to Jess' funeral. She wouldn't have wanted him there. He didn't know if Sam went or not.

It wasn't something they talked about.

As the pyre burned down, the others trickled off. Bobby went first, with the bullshit excuse of warming up the truck. Dean couldn't blame him - the man barely knew Mary, and Bobby had always seemed to value his solitude. Ellen went next, when the fire had burned down to embers. She pressed her hand to Dean's shoulder then Sam's, pulled Jo into a tight hug, and left without saying a word.

Jo didn't stay much longer. She swayed on her feet after her mother left, glancing from Sam to Dean. She wanted to stay, Dean guessed - though he hadn't been there long, he'd sensed a real bond between Jo and Mary at the Roadhouse - but something must have told her to leave the remains with Mary's sons. She moved backward for several paces as though she didn't want to turn her back on her friend. Dean didn't hear when she left completely, but he felt her absence just the same.

Dean stayed where he was, feet planted on the ground in a way that felt almost permanent. He didn't plan to move until the pyre was cold - maybe not even then. He didn't know what Sam planned. His brother had grown harder and harder to read on this odd little roadtrip into Hell.

It was an eternity before Sam opened his mouth.

"Dean," he said, and when Dean didn't react, he said it again, soft and forceful. "_Dean._"

Dean remained still, his eyes and hands planted as firmly as his feet. He could feel Sam's gaze like the heat of the fire, imagined it drying and cracking his skin. Sam's voice was taut, caught in the same grip that had seized Dean's chest that moment in the cabin, when the smoke of the yellow-eyed man had poured forth from his mouth and into his mother's.

"She saved our lives," Sam said, his words whispered, desperate.

Dean turned his head then to catch Sam's eye, but his hands remained in his pockets.

In the end, Sam left too, and Dean picked up the shovel to bury his mother's ashes.

Dean lost count of the number of bodies he'd burned by the time he was twenty. By twenty-one, he stopped expecting to get used to it.

He never knew why Dan and Carrie never smelled it on him, never saw it in his eyes, in the way some days he had trouble bringing himself to look up. Sam, he knew, just saw it as Dean being Dean. As part of his messed up older brother who couldn't be fixed, and most days he seemed to accept that. Accept _Dean_ at face value.

Other days, Dean knew Sam saw right through him.

Five was a crowd in Bobby's house, as used as it was to just one aging hunter and his stacks and stacks of old books. Dean preferred the yard anyway, out amongst the old wrecks, and he perched on the Impala's trunk like a bird, a beer bottle held loosely between two fingers.

That was where Jo found him, her hair damp from a shower. He imagined her skin scrubbed clean of the lingering smell of smoke, and thought of Julie.

"Hey," she said, and her voice seemed to echo through the shells of the cars around them.

Dean nodded to her, sipped his beer.

She pushed herself up to sit beside him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I really liked your mom."

Dean dropped his gaze, staring down at their feet on the bumper. Jo wore boots, worn and scuffed like his. He wasn't sure why that surprised him.

Jo's need to fill his silences didn't surprise him at all.

"If you ever want to talk," she said, then cut herself off. "Sorry. That was dumb. I just -"

"I don't." Dean winced at more than just the itching scrape of the words against his throat. His voice sounded harsh and final. He didn't remember how to make it flex, add in all those subtle lifts and twists everyone else used that meant so much. He twisted his head away, setting his beer down to rifle through his pockets.

"Yeah," Jo said, and there it was, the way that one word just drooped at the end. Dean didn't know how to do that. "I said it was dumb." She started to slide down off the trunk, but Dean caught her arm. She looked back and he lifted his brows. She shifted back up, re-securing her place next to him. "Just want company, huh?"

Dean nodded, his attention more on his notebook than on her. He preferred to sign, but he was just as familiar with writing. These words he could twist, and combined with a few facial ticks, he could make them say exactly what he wanted. He swallowed once, then held the page up.

_Tell me about her?_

Jo looked from the page, then to Dean. "Yeah. I can do that."

Sam waited two hours after Jo finally went inside before he came out to find Dean, still sitting on the Impala, now picking at the label on the empty beer bottle. He didn't sit, rather stood in front of Dean, hands shoved into his pockets, shoulders and head dropped lower than necessary just to meet Dean's eyes. He kicked at the gravel. Dean picked at the beer label.

Some people - maybe even most of them, those that could speak and hear at least - thought of a silence as a vacuum. They missed the natural noises of the world, the way silences took on shapes and meanings all their own. To them, silences were to be filled with manufactured noises: the sounds of music or the human voice. Life with Dean had broken Sam of that a long time ago, if he'd ever had it. When it was just the two of them, silences could stretch on for hours on end without either of them feeling uncomfortable.

This silence wasn't a comfortable one. This one weighed heavy with words the brothers hadn't yet said, and Dean knew Sam would break it. He just had to be patient.

"What do we do now?" Sam asked. Dean flicked a crumbled bit of label from his jeans, feeling perversely satisfied. The two of them drifted at times, bounced off each other and ricocheted in ways that left Dean doubting how well he really knew his brother. It was good to know that Sam could still be predictable.

Dean set the bottle aside. _Keep going._

Sam caught his wrists, startling Dean. Sam knew better than anyone how much Dean disliked anyone trying to control his hands.

"Dean," Sam said, dropping his chin and looking Dean in the eye, like he hadn't just broken Dean's cardinal rule. "_Talk_ to me."

Dean looked from his trapped hands to Sam and scowled. Sam shook his head.

"You know what I mean."

Dean did. And it hurt. Dean could talk, yes, could force air through his vocal chords and shape his mouth into sounds. He'd proven that, to himself and to all the people he'd cared about over the last six months, ever since the yellow-eyed man had forced that first, desperate "no" from him in Palo Alto. That didn't mean he liked it. That he was good at it. That it didn't _hurt _on some fundamental level, beyond just the strain of using unfamiliar, atrophied muscles. That it didn't hurt even more now, even without the blocks their mother had placed in him all those years ago. Words now would just be exhalations of bitter smoke, leaving his mouth tasting of ash.

He jerked his hands in Sam's grip, glaring harder, twisting his fingers into something that might read as an explanation, if he could complete the right movements.

Sam only held on harder.

"Dean, _please._"

A tortured squeak made its way up Dean's throat. He swallowed it, refusing to let it out into the open air, instead hissing through his teeth to let Sam know what he thought of the raw plea, the manipulation. But Sam was stubborn, more so than anyone Dean had ever known. Carrie had always said he got it from his father. Jo's description led Dean to wonder if maybe it was a bit of Mary, too. Their whole family was made of people digging in their heels.

Dean wondered if Sam thought he was just being stubborn, too.

Sam clung on, flicking his eyes over Dean's face, as though looking for an answer. Dean stared back, willing him to see the truth, and finally, Sam released him and stepped back.

Dean's hands moved with such fury that even he couldn't follow their meaning. He finally gave up, settling for simply glaring more, and Sam went back to staring at the ground, kicking bits of gravel this way and that.

"I just -" he started, then pinched the bridge of his nose, his shoulders heaving once as he tried to collect himself. "I don't want the last things I hear in your voice to be from that _thing_. I want to hear _you_, Dean. You're the only one I have left."

Dean looked away, unable to meet his brother's eyes. He knew that if he looked, Sam would see right through him and know the truth. Dean was the reason he'd lost all of it, everyone who cared about him. Dean was meant to be the one left as a pile of nameless ash, marked only by a rough stone and a circle of scorched grass.

Dean didn't remember everything about the night he'd damned his family. He remembered flickering red and gold, the sharpness of smoke as it struck the back of his mouth and wound down his throat. He remembered his father's eyes, wide and empty as they stared down from the impossible height of the ceiling. He didn't remember going to Sam's room, didn't know how he'd gone from being pressed to the wall to standing on the grass outside his burning home.

He remembered knowing, even as his mother pressed Sam into his arms and steered him towards his godparents on the edge of the lawn, that it was all his fault. He remembered the weight of that guilt dragging his stomach down as his mother turned away and walked into the flames without a backwards glance. He remembered believing that if he kept Sam safe, held onto him tight enough, that his mom might forgive him. That she'd come back for them.

Everything he'd learned in those six months on the road hunting down spirits and demons and family secrets only reinforced that. His mom had always been the strong one, the smart one, the one who knew how to handle things. If she'd been upstairs that night, she could have stopped the demon then and there, instead of having to wait for twenty-two years.

But she hadn't been upstairs, so Dad was the one to face the demon. Dad had never been a hunter, had no idea what he was facing, and it killed him. And Dean remembered as sharply as anything else why his mom hadn't been the one in that room.

Because Dean had woken and asked her for a glass of milk.

He should have known that Sam would see it, anyway.

Sam stepped forward, hands reaching. Dean flinched, but Sam moved too quickly. He caught Dean's chin between his palms, pulling Dean's gaze upward into his.

"Hey," he said, and his voice held Dean in place as firmly as his hands. "It's not your fault."

Dean snarled, jerking back, but Sam held on. There was no supernatural weight in his words, just the force of pure Sam, something they both knew Dean had no defense against. "It's _not _your fault, Dean."

Dean's hands clenched against the edge of the trunk. There wasn't enough room between them to sign.

"She saved our lives," Sam said. Dean tried to shake his head, but Sam's hands held on firm. "That was her choice. And she made the right one."

Dean sucked in a breath. His eyes ached. One of Sam's thumbs shifted up, rubbing against Dean's cheekbone, leaving a wet smear in its wake. Dean barely had time to register what that meant before Sam leaned his head down, resting his forehead on Dean's.

"C'mon, man," Sam said. "You're too smart for this."

Dean did shake his head, then, a bare twitch, and his hands came up of their own volition, twisting into the front of Sam's shirt. He could feel Sam's chest shuddering under his grip. Sam's hand lifted from his cheek, rubbing over the top of his head before it came to rest on the back of his neck.

"Please, Dean."

They stayed like that, heads together, hands hanging on, until the shaking in both their bodies slowed, until their breathing evened. Dean's face felt wet and raw as he pulled back just enough to look up. Sam's eyes were red and puffy, but they held firm. Dean wondered what he could possibly see that made him look at him like that.

"We're not broken," Sam said, and though it wasn't the first time Dean had heard the words, it may have been the first time he thought he could believe them.

Sam tilted his head up towards the sky and Dean followed his gaze. It was a clear night, and Bobby's place was far enough out of town for there to be plenty of stars. He knew a few constellations, the ones that had supernatural significance anyway. When they'd been younger, he and Sam would sometimes make them up, drawing their own lines and shapes in the sky. 'The booger' had been a favorite, or 'the farting baboon.' Dean didn't spot any of those tonight, just a scattering of lights, the glow of distant, smokeless fires.

A warm wind kicked up, carrying with it the scents of engine oil and gun powder and underneath, a note of bright, May green. Dean's nostrils flared, and he sighed.

"Happy birthday, Sammy."

Sam looked down, his eyes wide, his lips twitching. He stared at Dean. Dean tilted his head, thinking it must have come out wrong. Sam shook his head.

"I take it back," he said, a flicker of humor crossing his face. "You don't have to talk. You sound like a frog."

Dean smacked him in the back of the head, then started for Bobby's house without looking back. He knew Sam would follow. It was the unwritten rule, the most important thing that their parents had left them.

Wherever the Winchester brothers went, they went together.

_

* * *

She says "Life's a game we're meant to lose_  
_But stick by me and I will stick by you."_  
- A Girl, a Boy, and a Graveyard, Jeremy Messersmith


End file.
